'Gender role' in plane crashes

Air crashes involving women pilots are mostly caused by mishandling of the plane, while those with male pilots are more often the result of flawed decision-making and inattention, a study has found.

Flying planes with known mechanical problems, running out of fuel and landing with the gear up were typical male problems, said the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health study.

Women's crashes were caused more by incorrect use of the rudder, poor response to a bounce, or inability to recover from a stall.

"Males trade accuracy for speed," said Professor Susan Baker, the study's co-author. "They would rather do something faster even if they don't do it accurately.

"Women tend to be more cautious and pay greater attention to details and rules."

The authors said women might have mishandled planes because on average they had less flight time and experience than men.

The study in this month's issue of Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine was prompted in part by the more than 30-fold increase of women airline pilots since 1959.

It looked at crashes of civilian, non-commercial planes from 1983 to 1997, involving 144 female and 287 male pilots aged over 40.

Aircraft mishandling was the most common problem for both, but was blamed in 80 per cent of crashes by female pilots and just 48 per cent by men. Flawed decision-making was responsible in about 29 per cent of male crashes compared with 19 per cent of women's. Inattention was a factor in 32 per cent of male crashes but about 19 per cent for women.

One pilot said the depiction of men as hot-dogging mavericks and women as incompetent "borders on the stereotypical."

- AGENCIES