Women Pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary

Name: Women Pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary
Start: 2025-03-09T18:30:00+00:00
Location: 75 Humberstone Gate, LE1 1WB

Schedule

Sun, 09 Mar, 2025 at 06:30 pm

UTC+00:00

Location

75 Humberstone Gate, LE1 1WB | Leicester, EN

Talk by Dorothy Saul-Pooley
The Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) was set up at the start of the Second World War to ferry new, repaired and damaged military aircraft between factories, assembly plants, transatlantic delivery points, maintenance units (MUs), scrapyards and active service airfields. It also flew service personnel on urgent duty from one place to another and performed some air ambulance work. Notably, around 10% of its pilots were women, and from 1943 they received equal pay to their male colleagues, a first for the British government.
Dorothy was invested as Master of the Honourable Company of Air Pilots (formerly the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators) in 2014. It was the first time in the organisation’s 85-year history that it had been headed by a woman. She is an experienced pilot of both fixed-wing and rotary aircraft with around 9,700 flying hours in about 95 different types.
All welcome - admission free. Tea & biscuits.
Donations welcome - £5 suggested to cover speaker and other costs.