FRANKFURT: March 08, 2019. CargoLogicAir (CLA) flight crew Jacqueline Robinson and Carina Krause celebrated International Women’s Day today by flying one of the airline’s B747-400 freighters to Atlanta.

Robinson, who has more than 3,000 hours flying B747s, joined CLA in 2015 as a senior first officer and was promoted to captain in 2018. Carina Krause started with the airline last year having previously flown for Global Supply Systems and TUI Germany.

In 2018 CLA was one of the first signatories of the Women in Aviation and Aerospace Charter, launched during the Farnborough International Airshow, as part of the airline’s commitment to gender equality.

“As a growing international airline, we want to promote the aviation industry as a great career choice for men and women and we want to ensure that we attract, and offer opportunities to, the most talented individuals to support our expansion plans,” declared airline CEO David Kerr. “Today, as we celebrate International Women’s Day, we recognise the important contributions all of our female employees are making to the success of CargoLogicAir, as symbolised by captain Robinson and first officer Krause.”

Going the other way across the Atlantic today, Air Canada operated a B787 flight from Montreal to Brussels with an all-female flight crew, cabin attendants plus a ground crew providing customer boarding, aircraft servicing, loading, pushback and flight watch functions.

Meanwhile Shaesta Waiz, daughter of an Afghan immigrant to the US and now a professional pilot, has been flying solo around the world to promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) among girls.

The first national Woman's Day was observed in the US on February 28,1909 in honour of the 1908 garment workers' strike in New York, where women protested against working conditions.

The following year the Socialist International met in Copenhagen to establish a Women's Day to honour the movement for women's rights and to build support for achieving universal suffrage. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, including the first three women elected to the Finnish Parliament.

As a result of the Copenhagen initiative, International Women's Day was marked for the first time on March 19,1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland - where today Swiss WorldCargo staff acknowledged collaboration, teamwork and equality.

In 1975 Women's Day was adopted by the United Nations and is now an official holiday in Afghanistan, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, China (for women only), Cuba, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Madagascar (for women only), Moldova, Mongolia, Nepal, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zambia.