LONDON – EasyJet has announced that it will be recruiting 1000 pilots over the next 5 years, with a focus on recruiting female pilots.

The low-cost airline, which is expecting bookings that are pre-corona levels for the coming summer holidays, said it wants to recruit more women to tackle the industry’s blatant gender disparity.

“We are delighted to be reopening our pilot training program again for the first time since the pandemic hit and will see us recruit over 1,000 new pilots in the coming years,” EasyJet’s chief executive Johan Lundgren was reported as saying.

“EasyJet has long championed greater diversity in the flight deck and this series of ads aims to highlight the extraordinary breadth of skills our pilots have and show that pilots can be found in all walks of life, in a bid to attract more diverse candidates.

“We continue to focus on challenging gendered stereotypes of the career having doubled the number of female pilots flying with us in recent years.”

Lundgren made the headlines last week when he said that testing requirements “will be a thing of the past.”

“The World Health Organization has said that testing on travel is not an effective measure to combat the virus and that has been confirmed by more studies,” he told investors on Thursday after EasyJet reported £213 million in losses in the last quarter of the year.

“I think there is more of an understanding that testing doesn’t need to be re-introduced into travel because of the little effect it has in combating the virus.”