Female Pilots Excel in High-Stress Scenarios

Female pilots may have an edge when things go wrong in the cockpit, according to a new study from the University of Waterloo.

Researchers found that women with limited flight experience performed more consistently than men during high-stress flight simulations, including emergency landings. Although male and female pilots showed nearly identical gaze patterns, women made fewer control errors, completed emergency tasks more quickly, and reported stronger situational awareness. These findings challenge persistent gender bias in aviation and suggest a need to rethink how we train and evaluate pilots.

Putting Gender Bias to the Test

“These findings are exciting because they push us to rethink how we evaluate pilots,” said Naila Ayala, lead author of the study and postdoctoral fellow in Waterloo’s Multisensory Brain and Cognition Lab.

The research team, which included Ayala along with co-authors Suzanne Kearns, Elizabeth Irving, Shi Cao, and Ewa Niechwiej-Szwedo, designed a controlled experiment to probe differences in performance, not perception. Their study involved 20 general aviation pilots—10 women and 10 men—all with fewer than 300 total flight hours.

Each participant completed nine landing scenarios inside a high-fidelity simulator, including a surprise engine failure designed to raise stress levels. Eye-tracking glasses monitored visual attention, while software recorded flight performance and timing.

Despite nearly identical gaze behavior, women:

– Executed more stable landing approaches
– Completed emergency procedures faster
– Scored higher on self-rated situational awareness
– Made fewer flight control errors

Ayala noted, “We can’t assume that because two pilots are looking at the same things, they will react the same way. Our study shows that women may be better at keeping control and making decisions in stressful flight scenarios.”

Beyond Gaze: What Really Matters in Flight

The study, published in the Proceedings of the 2025 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications (ETRA ’25), highlights the importance of assessing not just what pilots look at, but how they act on that information. Gaze data alone offered little insight into gender differences. But when combined with performance outcomes, a pattern emerged: under pressure, female pilots consistently outperformed male counterparts on key metrics.

That pattern held even though all participants had similar flight training and logged hours. It suggests that female pilots may possess or develop different strategies for coping with task overload, especially in time-critical situations.

Implications for the Aviation Industry

“Understanding how different people perform under pressure helps us build better training programs for everyone, safer cockpits, and more inclusive aviation systems,” said co-author Suzanne Kearns, associate professor and director of the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Aeronautics.

The aviation industry faces a global pilot shortage and continues to struggle with gender imbalance. Women make up less than 10% of licensed pilots worldwide. This study adds evidence that expanding opportunities for women in aviation isn’t just equitable—it could improve safety and performance as well.

Looking Ahead

While the sample size was small and focused on early-career pilots, the findings raise important questions about how performance is judged in pilot certification and training. The team hopes their work will inform future standards that better capture a range of strengths rather than relying on outdated assumptions.

The full paper, “Exploring gender differences in aviation: Integrating high-fidelity simulator performance and eye-tracking approaches in low-time pilots,” is available in the *Proceedings of the 2025 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications* (ETRA ’25), Article No. 22, pp. 1–8.
DOI: 10.1145/3715669.3723124