Women at Icelandair

Linda Gunnarsdóttir is the Chief Pilot at Icelandair, leading a team of approximately 575 pilots in 2023 ("That's like the population of a small village in Iceland," says Linda). The ratio of female pilots working at Icelandair has recently increased to 14% – a similar figure to the pre-covid era. That's among the highest ratios of female pilots working for any major airline in the world, a statistic that we are very proud of.

New to the team is Linda's 24-year-old daughter, Birna Katrín Gunnlaugsdóttir, who has followed in her mother's footsteps and is now piloting Dash aircraft on domestic Iceland routes. It was a dream of Birna Katrín's for a long time, no doubt inspired by her mother.

Linda acknowledges the immense value of having female role models when she was considering pursuing a career as a pilot. (Icelandair's first female pilot, Sigríður Einarsdóttir, retired in 2022 after a 38-year career.) Linda explains, "That surely matters. My own father was a pilot, and in the back of my mind I dreamt of being a pilot. But in those days I didn’t think it was an option. But I recall flying to Akureyri and this first woman pilot [Sigríður], she was actually flying. I recall seeing her on the flight and I started to realize that this was a dream that could come true. And I’m very lucky to be born here, in a country where I had the chance. You don’t have to go very far from Iceland to see women getting fired when they get pregnant."

Linda and her team work to encourage women to strive to reach their goals. "We try to promote this job as a good opportunity for females as well as males. Let's inspire young girls with stories of successful women in aviation and give them a chance to get the enthusiasm needed to build a career in aviation."

Check out the cockpit images of Linda and Birna Katrín – in 2022, and in 2003. And scroll down to see Linda as part of an all-female crew from 1999.

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Watch a 10-minute speech made by Linda at the Global Aviation Gender Summit in 2018, where she discusses her career, and what's needed to bring more women into aviation.

If you need more evidence of the importance of having good role models: Birna Katrín Gunnlaugsdóttir followed in Linda's footsteps, speaking at the Global Aviation Gender Summit in July 2023 on the topic 'Vision of the Next Generation'.

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Icelandair's first female pilot, Sigríður Einarsdóttir, retired in 2022 after a 38-year career. For her final flight our female pilots formed a guard of honor.

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Before Covid, Icelandair was among the airlines with the highest proportion of female pilots in the world, at 12%. However. the effects of Covid-19 changed the landscape for female pilots significantly, and the proportion of female pilots had dropped to 5% in 2021.

With changes following the pandemic, the proportion of female pilots at Icelandair rose to 14% in 2023.

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On Women's Rights Day, June 19, 1999, an Icelandic jet airliner was flown by an all-female crew for the first time. The captain was Geirþrúður Alfreðsdóttir, assisted by Linda Gunnarsdóttir. The flight attendants were led by the captain's sister, Katrín Alfreðsdóttir.

Today, Linda Gunnarsdóttir holds the position of Icelandair’s Chief Pilot. At the time of this flight, Linda was six months' pregnant with her daughter Birna Katrín – who recently joined Icelandair as a pilot.

Two years after the all-female flight, another notable flight took off with female pilots and male flight attendants – an interesting reversal of the traditional roles of airline crews.

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On June 19, 1999, it was noteworthy for us to have an aircraft flown by an all-female crew for the first time.

Twenty-five years later, it’s heartwarming to see how far we’ve come: two crews that flew on June 19, 2024, were all-female, and this was just a regular day for us, not an unusual occurrence.

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If you enjoy watching pilots in action, check out the Just Planes video made in 2022 from the cockpit of a 757 as two Icelandair pilots, Captain Sigrún Ingvardóttir and First Officer Salvör Egilsdóttir, fly from Keflavík to Seattle.

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We celebrate Iceland’s position as a pioneer of equality and women’s empowerment.

For over a decade, Iceland has topped the World Economic Forum’s annual index measuring gender equality. In its key findings in 2023, the WEF writes:

"Iceland continues to incrementally advance towards gender parity since the inaugural 2006 edition and ranks 1st for the 14th consecutive year. Iceland has closed 91.2% of the gender gap, which is 0.4 percentage points higher than the previous edition.

The overall gender parity ranking is buoyed by its relatively strong performance across the Political Empowerment and Economic Participation and Opportunity subindexes. Iceland has almost doubled its gender parity score in Political Empowerment since 2006. Iceland has been led by a female head of state for 25 of the last 50 years and more than two-fifth of its ministerial and parliamentary positions are held by women..."

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In early June, 2024, Icelanders elected Halla Tómasdóttir as president. She is the seventh president of Iceland and the second female president in the country’s history.

We made history in 1980 by electing Vigdís Finnbogadóttir as the world’s first democratically elected female head of state – watch the video to learn more about this remarkable woman.

Half of the candidates in the 2024 presidential election were female, showing that in the true spirit of Iceland, equality has become the rule, not the exception.

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As part of Icelandair's commitment to bring the spirit of Iceland to the world, we aim to be a global leader when it comes to improving gender equality in the world of aviation.

In 2009, there was only one woman of five Board Directors, and the Executive Management team was exclusively men. Today, women represent 40% of the Board of Directors, 38% of the Executive Committee, and 42% of overall management positions.

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In recent years, we have worked systematically towards progress on gender equality through our active gender equality program and equal pay policy.

As part of IATA’s (International Air Transport Association) ‘25by2025’ equality project, we have set the following goals:

• To ensure an equal gender balance in the management positions – never less than 40% of either gender in management positions
• To increase the number of female pilot positions by 25% by 2025 compared to 2021
• To increase the number of male cabin crew positions by 25% by 2025 compared to 2021
• To increase the number of female aircraft maintenance technicians by promoting the job and education to girls.

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Since 2018, Reykjavík has hosted the annual Reykjavík Global Forum – Women Leaders, an event that brings together women leaders from all sectors and all continents, with the goal of creating positive, measurable change. As a country that ranks highly for closing the gender gap, Iceland is an ideal location for the forum.

Gender equality is one of Icelandair’s core values, and we’re proud to sponsor and participate in such an important event. Take a look at highlights from the 2022 event.

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In 2022, Iceland's First Lady, Canadian-born Eliza Reid, published a book titled Secrets of the Sprakkar, covering 'Iceland's extraordinary women and how they are changing the world'. It offers a great examination of the status of women in Iceland. You can read an excerpt from the book in our blog post, Eliza Reid: Secrets of the Sprakkar.

Iceland Travel has a good post about Icelandic Women: Myths, Role Models & History.

Icelandair Group's Annual and Sustainability Report for 2023 has detailed information on our equal pay policy, equality objectives and opportunities, and relevant staff numbers.

The Icelandic Women’s Rights Association has excellent resources on gender equality in Iceland.