Soaring Safely: Insights from Above the Wings to Ground Safety with Emma Henderson
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:
ABOUT THE EPISODE
Drawing from her extensive experience as an airline captain, Emma Henderson joins the show to share her pivotal insights from “Above the Wings to Ground Safety,” illustrating how other industries can effectively apply key aviation safety elements. She recounts the inspiring story behind Project Wingman Foundation, highlighting its profound impact and lessons learned. Emma emphasizes the importance of peer support, civility, and an organizational culture of learning in fostering a safe culture. Join us for this engaging episode to discover how you can elevate safety in your industry.
READ THE EPISODE
Real leaders leave a legacy. They capture the hearts and minds of their teams. Their origin story puts the safety and well-being of their people first. Great companies ubiquitously have safe, yet productive operations. For those companies, safety is an investment, not a cost for the C-suite. It’s a real topic of daily focus. This is the Safety Guru with your host, Eric Michrowski, a globally recognized ops and safety guru, public speaker and author. Are you ready to leave a safety legacy? Your legacy success story begins now.
Hi, and welcome to the Safety Guru. Today, I’m very excited to have with me Emma Henderson, MBE, and a former airline captain. Emma, welcome to the show. Very excited to have you with me. Let’s get started with a little bit about your background. What I didn’t realize was the number of female captains is actually much lower than I ever expected. Why don’t we start there?
Why not? Well, hi, Eric. It’s lovely to be here and thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of people are often shocked to find out that there are fewer than 500 female airline captains in the world, which is actually four times fewer female airline captains than there are endangered Bengal tigers, which is…
Oh, wow. Tell me a bit about your story in terms of your journey to become a captain. Now you’re doing a lot of work sharing a lot of wonderful work that has happened in aviation safety and bringing it to other industries, including health care.
Absolutely. I saw the space shuttle come into land on the back of a Boeing 747 when I was 10 years old at Stansted Airport in the UK. It was a huge event. Hundreds of thousands of people turned out to see it, fly over London and then land at Stansted. It was massive. And my parents, we didn’t live very far from Stansted, so my parents took me to see it, and I looked up and thought, that’s amazing. I want to fly one of those. And I wasn’t talking about the Boeing. I was talking about the space shuttle. So, I decided there and then that a 10-year-old me was going to be an astronaut, which was great, except that I didn’t know. I thought I’d have to become an American citizen in order to be able to be an astronaut. And remember that 10-year-old me was in 1983, so I didn’t have an Internet. I had Encyclopedia Britannica and whatever other encyclopedias and books I could my hands on. So, I basically didn’t really know how to even become a pilot. I knew I wanted to fly. So, because I don’t come from an aviation background at all, it was actually a bit of a roundabout route into flying because I actually went off to university to study history with a view to becoming a lawyer.
I was going to go do a law conversion and go the back door into law. While I was at university, I discovered something that we have in the UK called the University Squadron. So, it’s a volunteer reserve branch of the Royal Air Force. And universities across the country are affiliated to squadrons that are at bases throughout the country also. And they teach people to fly. And when I was doing that, it was learning to fly on something called a Bulldog. And now they use something called Grabs. So, Prince William was on a University Air Squadron, and he learned to fly in a grab in Lincolnshire. So, a friend of mine was actually one of his instructors. Sorry, it wasn’t in Lincolnshire. He was at St Andrews, so he would have been part of that University Air Squadron. But there’s a single engine, twin-seater, quite nifty little aircraft, actually. And I spent a couple of years doing that and decided then I was going to be a Harrier pilot because my feet were too small for the black flying boots that you get issued when you’re an air crew. So, they gave me brown Harrier boots, or brown flying boots, and that what Harrier pilots were.
So, I decided it was a sign, and I’m a Harrier pilot. But the slight curveball was that on the first night that I was down at R. F. Finningley to do my flying training, which we went every weekend from university, I wore it. A girl walked into a bar and met a guy. And we’ve been married for 29 years at the end of this month. So that was the curveball that I met my now husband. And six months later We got engaged. The year after that, we got married. And we literally lived happily ever after, which is really annoying for people, but it’s the truth. But that was what I thought of flying to an end again because I didn’t enjoy in the Air Force. It was actually another eight years before I was then living. We moved to New Zealand, and I took up flying again. I came back as a fully qualified commercial airline pilot, as you do.
When you go to New Zealand.
Yeah, it was very normal for military exchange wives to go on exchange and come back with a professional qualification. That’s how I got there.
MBE, what does it stand for those that are not British and aren’t aware of the MBE? Tell me a little bit about that and the rarity of that order.
Well, MBE means I’m a member of the Order of the British Empire. It goes back to days of your and nights and things like that. I’m not a night. I don’t have a sword or anything, but basically, it’s an honors system, and there are grades of honors. So, you can be made a member of the Order of the British Empire for outstanding service. It might be something like the arts or music or charity. And so, I was made MBE for my charity work with Project Wingman, which I have no doubt we’ll speak about in a moment. But there are several different grades and going right from member to OBE, which is an officer and then commander and night. And then if you’re knighted, then you become a sir or a dame. And the MBE is the lowest of the honors. But it’s an incredible honor, because outside of the military, I only know one other person who has been made MBE. That’s quite an honor. Awarded by Prince Charles as he was then, now the King, and given It happened to me, actually, I was the last tranche of people to be given the award signed by Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Philip because it was the last honors that were given out before Prince Philip passed away.
It feels very special to me. Oh, wow.
Yes. Well, congratulations. We’re going to talk about aviation safety in a couple of stats because it’s always interesting to think about why we keep talking about aviation safety and what’s the link to safety in other industries. I pulled up some stats from the NTSB. Just the last 15 years, there have been three fatalities in commercial aviation. While there was 8 trillion miles flown, this is We see NTSB data, so in the US, zero midair collision since 1978, 20,000 planes in the air at any given point in time in US airspace. It’s not always been that way. When you look at data from in the 1960s and 1970s, there was somebody on average dying every second to third day. Obviously, you’re looking at multiple different collisions over a year and you’re dividing by the number of days. But it was very, very different. Now it’s taken a significant pivot. Contrast that with on the ground in the US as a fatality every 96 minutes that happens in industry. Light in day, but it’s not an industry that started this way always. It’s an industry that had its risk because it’s a very unforgiven environment to be flying but has done a lot from a safety standpoint.
I’d love to explore some of the themes that in your mind have made this possible. I know you share this with a lot of other industries, including healthcare, because I think there’s some great learnings there. But why don’t we talk to some of the key elements that you think have helped make this difference?
Well, I think the first thing is that it’s really important to emphasize how safe flying is because so many people are either They’re afraid of flying or uncomfortable with it in some way. And I work a lot with people who are scared of flying to help them to understand why they don’t need to be. And you’re absolutely right. It’s still the case that it’s more dangerous to drive to the airport than it is to take a flight. And I think the stats from the ’60s and ’70s, we’ve got to remember that aviation is still a really young industry. We’ve only had aviation for just over 100 years, which is not very long. And the technological and the technological advances that have been made, even actually, particularly in the last 10 or 20 years, are astonishing. And aviation learns from its mistakes in a way that other industries are starting to realize is really valuable. And the medical industry, the healthcare industry, has for some time actually been implementing ideas from the aviation industry because they’re both safety-related industries. If when you’re dealing with people and you’re dealing with people’s lives, you have to have your primary focus on safety.
So, there’s a lot of parallels between aviation and medicine. And I think the first thing is that technology has been put in place on aircraft, on the ground, and at airport in order to be able to make it safer. So, we can see things now that we were never able to see before. It’s safer for us to fly in fog, for example. Sure. There’s just more ability for us to be aware of everything that’s going on around us. I think that’s the first thing, the technology, but also knowing how to use it, because it’s all great having a singing, dancing system in place. But if the people who are operating it haven’t really got a scuba how it works, then there’s no point having it. So, training has advanced massively as well. And safety reporting, there’s a lot of data that’s been collected over the last… So, we’re going back to the 1980s, for example. So even over the last 45 years, there’s so much data that’s being collected, and almost everything on a checklist that a pilot uses in a flight deck is the result of an incident or accident that has caused injury or fatality.
Almost everything. So, we learn from our mistakes, but we implement changes that are going to make a difference to improving safety really quickly and in a really meaningful way. I think that’s quite astonishing, having come out of aviation and into working with industry. You don’t see that everywhere. Maybe in medicine and the nuclear world, you might see that, but in a lot of other places, that just doesn’t happen. Right.
This element of learning culture is, I think, a big difference, and it goes to just culture, is there’s an expectation to report even fairly benign events, anything that went off course, essentially, that wasn’t expected, versus a lot of other industries, you don’t learn. You don’t have those opportunities to learn from things that could have gone wrong.
Absolutely. I think, in fact, in other industries, it’s quite the opposite. You still see a little bit of resistance to it in the airlines where people are saying, well, I don’t want to get found out. You think, well, you shouldn’t really be flying then. I would be expected to file a safety report for anything that was out of the ordinary. If it was significantly out of the ordinary, there’s even a button in an Airbus that you can push. So that when they look at all the flight data, they can see a red flag pop up. So, you can say an extraordinary event happened then, I’ll push the red button. So, when you analyze the data, you can find it quickly. So, there’s a lot of the data analysis happens all the time. Engines, for example, are monitored during a flight. I have in the past landed somewhere to find a message from somebody to say, there’s this going on with your engine. You can’t take the aircraft onto the next place. Because we’ve detected this. You think, wow, they did that before I was even on the ground without even looking because there’s so many sensors and aircraft are constantly talking to the ground as well.
There’s an element we talked about, which is also this very high standard that are set. There’s a professional orientation that gets you really embedded. That I think is something that also makes a big significant difference. Every pilot I’ve talked to, there’s really this sense of responsibility for passengers on board. There’s a very strong orientation around standards. You have a great story around when you became a captain on this.
I failed my first attempt at command, actually, and I talk about it very openly because in such a male-dominated culture, I think failure isn’t talked about enough. It certainly is not something that was talked about a lot when I failed my command. And the weight of responsibility that you have on your shoulders as a captain, you are responsible for the aircraft and everybody’s life on board that aircraft. So, for me, it would be 180 passengers plus six crew all in my hands. And that is a massive responsibility that you take very, very seriously and you train for it all the time. You’re not just a pilot when you’re at work. You’re a pilot when you’re driving to work and when you’re at parties and you’re thinking, well, actually, I’m flying in a couple of days’ time, so I’m not going to hit it really hard today. You’re always effectively thinking about work or at work. We’re just going to have to pause there, Eric, and you’re going to have to remind me story in particular we wanted to- This was a captain, I forget his name, that he said, do you have the highest standard?
I think. Oh, yes. You were on takeoff.
You need to pause for five seconds.
Yes.
So, when I was training for my command, there was a captain I was flying with, a fabulous guy called Gabriel, and we called him the angel Gabriel because he was just really lovely. He was a brilliant trainer and extremely talented as well. He was dual rated on different aircraft. He’s also a helicopter pilot. And he was doing something called a command assessment flight with me. And he said to me, we’ve taken off out of Stansted, and we were climbing up to, let’s say, for the sake of argument, 24,000 feet. And you have to read out. And there’s a readout that you have to do from the top of the screen so that you are basically announcing to the other pilot what thrust mode you’re in, what you’re expecting the aircraft to do, and what your stop altitude is. And so, I’d read that out, and Gabriel turned to me and he said, Emma, do you think you’ve got very high standards? And I said, Absolutely, 100 %, Gabriel, all the time. He said, okay, is that in everything you do? And I was thinking, where’s he going with this? I don’t. And I said, Yeah, absolutely.
I’m very confident to be able to say yes to that question. He said, but absolutely everything you do, you hold yourself to a really high standard. Yes, Gabriel, 100 % Where are you going with this story? And he said to me, okay, that’s really interesting, because what you’ve just read out is trust climb, climb, 390 blue. Yeah, that’s your 240 Blue where we’re going to. Absolutely, Gabriel. We said, Emma, the read out is, Thrust, climb, climb, flight level, 240 blue. And you didn’t say flight level. Actually, you’re not holding yourself to the standard. And I thought, God, you know what? He’s right. I had basically learned bad habits from people I’ve been flying with who just dropped the flight level words. And it might sound like a really small thing, but it really matters because it’s there for a reason. It’s there to make sure you don’t confuse other information with what you’re trying to get across. I think the easiest way to explain that is the fact I chose to use 24,000 feet for that illustration because you would say the words 2, 4, 0, blue. Does that mean you’re going 2, T, O, 4, 0, blue, which would be 4,000 feet, or does it mean 2, 4, 0?
That’s why you say flight level, and then everything after that has to be a number. That’s the reason for it. It was just It’s really interesting that I thought I helped myself to a really high standard. That’s what command assessment flights are for, to pick those things up. Of course, when I then went through my actual command, I made sure that I was setting the example all the time so that nobody sitting next to me could ever say, oh, well, Emma doesn’t do it, so I’m not going to bother either.
Sure. But this element of high standard also instills this professional orientation across in every role and every function in terms of you have to hold that high bar because it’s a very unforgiving environment once you’re up in the air.
Very much so. I think it’s like with everything. If you want to be known for something, you have to be it. If you want to be known as being a successful professional, you have to be a successful professional. If you want to be known as being a professional, you have to act like a professional. You have to dress like a professional. And it comes down even to that. There would be captains that would come into the crew room. It might have been quite fun to talk to in the crew but if they’re coming in with a messy tie and their shirt not tucked in and the stuff hanging out of their bag, it just gives you an impression of somebody who think, oh, that’s not what I was expecting, actually, of an airline captain. Are they as professional as their qualifications would need you to believe? Or do they let things slip in other areas as well? And there’s one person I can think of who absolutely the way they behaved in the crew room was the way they behaved in the aircraft. And they were They were a great hand flyer, but I didn’t ever think they were terribly safe.
I never enjoyed flying with them because I didn’t ever feel particularly confident in the way they were handling everything outside of the flight deck, because you’re not just there to operate the aircraft. You’re there to manage people and manage time and make decisions and all of those things as well.
This episode of the Safety Guru podcast is brought to you by Propulo Consulting, the leading safety and safety culture advisory firm. Whether you are looking to assess your safety culture, develop strategies to level up your safety performance, introduce human performance capabilities, re-energize your BBS program, enhance supervisory safety capabilities, or introduce unique safety leadership training and talent solutions, Propulo has you covered. Visit us at propulo.com
Com. Another item we touched on is civility, which is something I’ve not normally heard of when talking about civil aviation. But tell me a little bit about the element of civility that you brought up.
Well, the thing is that as part of CRM, so crew resource management, is there is always going to be a command gradient when you’ve got one more experienced pilot than the other. If you’ve got an environment, you’ve got to have an environment in the flight deck, but also on the whole aircraft, where everybody is able to feel safe saying the things they need to say. And it comes down to civility because it’s what it says on the tin. It’s just being polite and having manners, giving people that space to be able to speak up and say, actually, do you know what? I think we need to go on oxygen here because there’s a funny smell in the flight deck. And rather than shouting them down and saying, no, no, that’s absolutely not necessary. That’s down in communication. Stability allows people to break down barriers that make the world safer, make the flying world safer, make the medical world safer. And I find it quite bewildering that people have to be taught that, frankly, because I grew up in an environment where you listen to each other, even if you don’t like what the other person is saying, you still need to hear them out because it might just be that brand new first officer you’re flying with has only got 500 hours to their name, might actually be quite a lot sharper than me as a 51-year-old being around the block a little bit, flown for quite a long time, and still trying to look out for everything all the time, but I might have missed something.
If I don’t listen to that, and there’s no point having two people on a flight deck, and we need to keep two people on a flight deck for exactly that reason. They always say about they should let pilots fly with dogs, and the dog’s there to bite the pilot if it ever tries to touch anything. I don’t know if you’ve got that. Yes, I don’t think that’s happening. No, it’s just a fun joke about how pilots shouldn’t really be allowed to touch anything in a flight deck. It’s engineers, I think, largely that say things like that, to be fair. But because they’ve been engineered out of the flight deck, haven’t they? But I think that It’s interesting that civility is something that is being taught a lot in health care now. I would argue that it’s being covered in aviation to the point where when you go through your pilot training, there are points at which you’re told you’re the absolute best of the best, and there’s a risk of arrogance creeping in. But actually, the average cadet who comes onto the line in an airline, certainly in the UK, is extremely good at operating the aircraft, extremely good at finding their way around the manuals, and is very, very good at understanding that whilst they are very good at what they do, they don’t have any experience, and that they can learn much from the person they’re sitting next to.
In medicine, I’m told by people who work in medicine, that still isn’t there because you’ve still got your very senior consultant anesthesia, for example, who couldn’t possibly learn something from a 22-year-old or 25-year-old that’s just come out of medical school. Actually, of course they could. We can always… The day I stop learning in aviation is the day I need to stop. As it happened, I stopped before that day came.
I think you bring the topic of health care, and you do a lot of your work in terms of bringing the concepts of aviation safety to health care. Tell me a little bit about how other industries can benefit from some of these concepts we’ve talked about.
Well, every other industry, to be honest with you, can benefit from the transferable skills and knowledge that comes from operating a flight deck because you’re in charge of a multimillion a pound machine, 180 people’s lives as almost as a minimum. If you’re flying transatlantic, then you’ve got a lot more people than that on board. We’re operating really complex systems, and you have to know how they all interact with each other, because it’s not just the case that if something stops working on an Airbus, the systems are all in triplicate. So, there’s always a backup, but it’s actually, if one system fails, how does that impact all the other systems that are around it? How do you make decisions when that happens? If you get a problem in a flight, are you actually going to turn back, or are you going to carry on, or are you going to divert? All of those decisions, and you’re making those decisions at 600 miles an hour, seven miles above the planet. So, you need to know how to do it. Actually, in aviation, we’re not just taught how to do that. We’re tested twice a year in our recurrent simulator checks.
We have line checks with training captains. It depends on the airline, but they’re usually annual. We have to renew our license every year to be able to continue to fly. We have to have a medical to be able to fly. All the working parts around walking onto an aircraft with your flight bag in your Ray-Bans and riding out in front of the passengers saying, Hey, it’s Captain Emma here today. All the moving parts around that are what makes the flight work successfully, not just because of the knowledge that you have as the captain, but because you know how to extract the things you need from the team that you’re with. And business can learn from that, and medicine can learn from that. Actually, as personal, private individuals, we can learn from that. Sure. Because it turns out, who knew that going back to caveman days, if we all work together, we survive for longer. It’s always been the case that if there’s somebody who wants to exclude themselves from the team, everything stops working. You can’t actually fly an aircraft on your own. You can fly a light aircraft on your own. But even then, you still have to have air traffic controllers and people to…
You can never really do anything significant on your own.
Correct. You mentioned at the beginning, Project Wingman. Tell me a little bit about what Project Wingman is.
Well, Project Wingman came as a candle lit up in the darkness of what happened in 2020. And so for us in the UK, and I know it’s different in other parts of the world, things happened at different times and in different ways. But as much as we went through March 2020, it became pretty obvious to me anyway, that something really significant was about to happen to our industry. And I was worried about it. I’m not going to lie. I wasn’t, by any means, last into the airline. I wasn’t worried that I was going to lose my job, particularly because I worked for a big European airline that’s still running, and I wasn’t last in. So if there were redundancies, I wasn’t concerned about that. But I could see, I describe it as a tidal wave of air washing across the world, and it felt like I was trapped. And at the same time, we were being told on the news that the NHS, which is the health system here in the UK, was about to face its biggest challenge ever. And I knew that obviously cabin crew, flight attendants have a lot of medical training in order to be able to do their job.
We have as pilots a lesser degree of training, but we still have to do some some first aid training. And it occurred to me that I was also as a peer mentor, the European Airlines have to have a peer support system. And I think most airlines in the US and Canada and around the world have them as well. And I was a peer support mentor, and I just realized that there was an opportunity if we were going to be grounded to help people who were about to face this big challenge. So, I spoke to the professor who oversaw the program at my airline, and he knew of someone else, another airline who was thinking along the same lines. So, we got together. This guy’s girlfriend worked for the NHS. So, we came up with this idea, which was to provide tea and empathy to NHS frontline staff. And the way we did that was to ask. We decided we were going to ask Air Crew if they would support this by coming in in uniform to go and serve teas and coffees and just be a listening ear to NHS staff when they were able to take a break.
Because lots of medical staff were going in to work for their shifts and not going home for five, six, seven days because They just didn’t get time. They were sleeping on the floors of hospitals. They didn’t have iPhone charges. It was hard for them to contact their families. And so, we just said, look, we’re going to wrap our arms around you, one safety related industry to another in your time of greatest need. So, he wrote the medical manuals, and I had this platform that I was able to use that I hadn’t realized I was going to need because I had been on an ITV documentary called Inside the Cockpit the year before, and I had become quite well known as Captain Emma, both within and out of the industry. So, I put a call out on… I just used all the social media platforms I had, including workplace, which was what we in my airline. And I just said, look, we’re going to go and help NHS staff. We want people in uniform to volunteer to go into your local hospital. We’ll coordinate it who’s in. And I set up a Gmail address. And after three days, I had 750 people who had signed up to help, which was more than I could manage to respond to and put on a spreadsheet.
That’s when the first friend came to help run what became the charity. And by the summer of 2020, we had six and a half thousand volunteers across the UK and America, but mostly in the UK. We had 104 lounges open in every nation of the UK, from right up in the north of Scotland, where I live, down to Devon in the south of England, and from Ireland across to East Anglia. We had two lounges in New York City, which was incredible. I never got to visit them. And one of these days I’d really like but people just signed up. It was like every second, almost. My phone was going, as people would sign up and say, I’d like to come and help. This is where I live. And we just said, look, let us know what your name is, what your phone number is, what your email is, where you live, or where you are, not necessarily where you live, where you are now, because some people realized that they were going into lockdown and went home to parents, which was really great, because actually, otherwise, all the constant concentration of people would be around the big airports.
And we had people in Wales that were able to run lounges, even not near an airport, because they had all gone home to stay with their parents for this lockdown. And that’s what we did. And we started off with a lounge at the Whittington Hospital in North London. And the next day, the Royal Free opened, and then the next day, another lounge, and another lounge, and another lounge. And then we moved outside of London, and it just spread like wildfire. It was It was incredible to see the number of people that were willing to get out of bed every day and put their uniforms on and do something they didn’t have to do for people they didn’t know at an unknown risk to them and for an indeterminate amount of time when they were facing their own challenges. It was phenomenal. I’ve never stopped being astonished by the reaction of people to that.
Well, that’s an incredible story. I didn’t realize the extent of the work that had happened with Project Wingman.
Well, no, I think that actually I don’t think I realized, to be honest with you, until probably the middle of 2021, when we had to change what we were doing slightly because we had started out going into physical hospital sites, and they needed their spaces back, and our crew went back to work. So, we bought a double-decker bus that we converted into a mobile wellbeing lounge. And then we bought another one. Our plan was to have six but actually, we ended up with two. And they toured the country doing the same thing, but with a lower requirement for staff and lower requirement for space being provided by the hospital. So, the charity has been running now for four and a half years. And we’re just taking a pause over this summer to work out what the next stage looks like, because it’s a great thing to have done. And it was brilliant for… It’s been brilliant for Air Crew. It’s been brilliant for the medical profession, and we’ve placed 2000 people who’ve left aviation and gone permanently to work for health care as a result of that experience. But the long-term solution for medical staff well-being can’t be a crew in uniform.
There has to be an in-house solution that we can potentially help to deliver, but they have to come up with their own solution. So, we’re just at the moment in the stage of to see what comes next, basically.
Very cool. So, Emma, thank you very much for joining me on the show. You’ve got a book as well, I believe, that you’ve recently published. Tell me about that.
I have, yeah. I’ve launched a new career as a professional speaker, and I work with businesses and organizations and conferences and things, delivering keynotes either about what inspires people about my journey or working with them on leadership lessons from the flight deck. And whenever I’ve given one of these presentations, you can’t say everything in 40 minutes. So, lots of people started to say to me, you really should put your story down on paper. And I thought, well, actually, I’ve got nothing to lose by doing that, because even if it’s just for me, it’s still interesting. And so, I did. I started writing the story down of how a pretty average girl from East Anglia decided she wanted to be a pilot and then became one. And it’s really the story of my journey into, though, and out of aviation and what I did next. And I wrote it to encourage people to understand that we have all got more in us. We’re all capable of much, much more than we ever think we’re capable of achieving. And it was really just to say to people, this is what happened to me. These are the challenges that I faced along the way that I flipped on their head and turned into opportunities.
And you can do it, too. So, it’s available on Amazon if you’d like to read it. It’s also available in Barnes & Noble, if you’re listening in the US. They actually have it in store, I believe. I’ve been told by my nephew that he’s seen it in a bookstore in Townsville in Australia.
Oh, wow.
So, if you’re listening to this in Townsville, Australia, and you know where that bookshop is. I need to know because I need to thank them. And so far, it’s been launched. I launched it a month ago. It was published a month ago. And I’ve sold 600 copies already, which is amazing. And people seem to be enjoying reading it, which is incredibly flattering when you poke your head above the parapet and expose yourself effectively on paper. You can’t take it back once it’s in print. So, for people to read it and enjoy it is incredibly… It’s a huge privilege for me to know that what I’ve written has been interesting for people.
Thank you so much for joining me on the show, Emma.
It’s my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me and for having the podcast in the first place.
Thank you for listening to The Safety Guru on C-suite Radio. Leave a legacy. Distinguish yourself from the past. Grow your success. Capture the hearts and minds of your teams. Elevate your safety. Like every successful athlete, top leaders continuously invest in their safety leadership with an expert coach to boost safety performance. Begin your journey at execsafetycoach.com. Come back in two weeks for the next episode with your host, Eric Michrowski. This podcast is powered by Propulo Consulting.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Until September 2020, Emma Henderson was one of fewer than 500 female airline captains in the world, flying thousands of passengers all over Europe. Then, as COVID swept the globe and grounded Emma and her colleagues, she founded a charity, of which she became CEO, and chose to allow the sun to set on a flying career that spanned over three decades. Already well-known in the airline industry, Emma starred in an ITV documentary – Inside the Cockpit – in 2019 and overnight became known as “Captain Emma.”
Emma’s route into aviation is an unusual enough story on its own, but the challenges she has faced throughout her career have taught her more than most about leadership, resilience, perseverance, and grace, and she has used these skills to great effect at Project Wingman which has gained national acclaim uniting the airline industry in providing well-being support to NHS frontline staff across the UK and briefly, the US.
Emma’s story is one of determination, finding the good in everyone, inspiring and empowering her team of 6500 volunteers, leading from the front, and always with a generous heart.
Throughout her flying career she received many personal letters and messages from passengers thanking her for the way she chose to treat them and her crew, and she was nominated easyJet Captain of the Year in 2018.
Her charity has also been widely acclaimed, supporting thousands of people in the NHS and the airlines, and has been acknowledged not only by the NHS but also by the airline industry and government. Emma was made MBE for her services to charity in January 2021.
Emma shows us how to triumph over adversity, which she has successfully turned into a living demonstration of how to literally “Lead from the Front,” and she now uses the years of knowledge and experience she gained from a life at 37000 feet to inspire the next generation of aviators, mentoring aspiring pilots, giving her time as a STEM Ambassador and an Aviation Ambassador for the UK Department for Transport, painting pictures and telling stories of a life above the clouds that few have the privilege ever to witness.
To all who know her, Emma’s passion for her job has always shone through, and so her decision to take redundancy in September 2020 is an emotional story of having to make tough but right decisions and choosing to be grateful for what she has had and has been able to achieve.
Emma’s “career pivot” from airline captain to charity CEO has been inspirational, and the fact that so many people are still giving their time to volunteer for the charity she created is a testament to her leadership skills and generous personality.
In addition to her experiences of working and leading in a traditionally male-dominated environment, Emma is well versed in the transferable skills practiced daily by all pilots – teamwork, inspirational leadership, decision making, workload management, and communication have been as much Emma’s bread and butter over the last decade as her ability to fly and Emma is qualified to speak with considerable knowledge on a wide range of topics as a result.
Key achievements are reflected in all she has done, and Emma has been widely celebrated across the industry for these, being recognised as businesswoman of the year in 2023, she has also received a Points of Light award, an ACA Chairman Industry Recognition Award, was awarded the Brabazon Cup in 2021, as well as being made MBE. Most recently she has been recognised at the Speaker Awards as a Highly Commended Storyteller.
Emma has been delivering inspirational talks and presentations to a number of organisations for many years, working with RBS, NatWest, CAE, the MOD, the NHS, the London Insurance market, and EDF, to name but a few, and her fascinating story, ability to inspire and empower, her compassion and wry humour have delighted audiences in every arena and left them feeling equipped and compelled to become better versions of themselves.
For more information: https://www.emma-henderson.com/
RELATED EPISODE
STAY CONNECTED
The Safety Guru with Eric Michrowski
More Episodes: https://thesafetyculture.guru/
C-Suite Radio: https://c-suitenetwork.com/the-safety-guru/
Powered By Propulo Consulting: https://propulo.com/
Eric Michrowski: https://ericmichrowski.com
EXECUTIVE SAFETY COACHING
Like every successful athlete, top leaders continuously invest in their Safety Leadership with an expert coach to boost safety performance.
Safety Leadership coaching has been limited, expensive, and exclusive for too long.


