Delta and Airbus Launch Girls in Aviation Day WING Flight

Front-Row Seats to the Factory Floor

Instead of sitting through high school lectures, 160 young women from eight Atlanta-area schools and organizations spent Girls in Aviation Day on an airport tarmac. They boarded a dedicated jet at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and flew directly to Mobile, Alabama, for the 11th annual WING Flight—an event that trades textbook theory for a direct look at how commercial airliners are actually built and bought. Their destination: Airbus's U.S. Manufacturing Facility.

It wasn't a passive walk-through, either. Across four distinct stops, the students stepped onto the active A320 assembly line and tested aviation games inside the Delivery Center. At Flight Works Alabama, they took control of flight simulators and piloted drones, before wrapping up the facility tour at Bishop College to check out the school’s advanced manufacturing labs.

Where the Next Generation Comes From

The industry needs people, and it needs them fast. Projections show the U.S. aviation sector will require hundreds of thousands of new workers over the next decade, forcing major airlines to look well beyond traditional recruiting pools. Delta is taking a direct swing at that gap, partnering with local schools and community groups to give underrepresented teenagers a real look at aviation jobs.

As Keyra Lynn Johnson, Delta’s chief diversity, equity, inclusion and social impact officer, puts it: talent is everywhere, but opportunity isn't. Opening doors earlier lets airlines build a workforce that looks more like the people on their planes. Events like the WING Flight—alongside Delta's Dream Flight, ACE Academy, and National Flight Academy initiatives—are designed to strip the mystery away from aviation careers and keep that talent pipeline moving.

Inside One of Aerospace's Few Global Hubs

The trip ended with an open, direct Q&A session at Bishop College. A panel of female executives from both companies—including Jennie Ho, Heather Tardiff, Barbara Quiroga-Lozano, Nicole Bell, and Caroline Jecko-Parkes—sat down to talk through their own career paths and field questions about breaking into aerospace.

Mobile isn't just a convenient field trip spot; it's one of only five cities on earth where Airbus builds commercial jets. More than 2,000 workers here assemble A320 and A220 family planes destined for carriers across the U.S. and Latin America. That local output ties straight back to commercial moves like Delta's recent order of 31 next-generation widebodies for its expanding international routes. Scaling up like that requires planning years in advance. As Caroline Jecko-Parkes of Airbus noted, getting young women hands-on experience today is simply an investment in tomorrow's flight innovation.