Calls for Jetstar to alter plan to fix ‘ludicrous’ issue

Jetstar has actually come under attack after it was declared all medical professionals that take a trip with the airline company are instantly presumed man in its system. It’s a discovery injury expert Dr Amanda McConnell discovered by hand last month when she was flying from Cairns to Brisbane for a service journey and was stood up at the luggage check-in workdesk.

“I had checked in online, and then I went to the bag drop at Jetstar. It was taking ages, and the flight attendant said, ‘I’m really sorry, I have to cancel your online check-in and manually check you in because when you choose the doctor title, it automatically defaults to you being a male’,” Amanda informed Yahoo News.

This procedure indicated she needed to mean over 5 mins at the workdesk enjoying the Jetstar employee by hand input her information while various other travelers waited behind her.

“I was shocked that in 2025 they’ve still got software that defaults doctors to being male… it’s ridiculous,” she stated. Amanda takes a trip with Jetstar often for job and understood for the last twenty years as a medical professional, she’s most likely been “travelling as a male” all this moment.

Female medical professionals give up Dr title for simpler life when taking a trip

After the case at the check-in workdesk last month, Amanda connected to associates to ask if they recognized the concern– and the solution was an unquestionable yes.

“Quite a few of my female doctor colleagues said, ‘Yes, that has also happened to us. That’s why we don’t travel with Doctor as our title’,” she described. Amanda examined why among Australia’s biggest airline companies had this system in position, calling it “outdated” and implicated Jetstar of “perpetuating unnecessary and avoidable gender bias.”

“In today’s society, where gender inclusivity is paramount, and technology has advanced significantly, it is essential for organisations — especially those as prominent as Jetstar — to ensure their systems reflect modern values,” she stated.

Jetstar safeguards women medical professionals being categorised as man

Yahoo News connected to Jetstar and an agent described the airline company “does not assign a gender to the title of Doctor on our customer-facing channels”.

However, in the back-end system, any type of guest with the title of Dr defaults to the “highest weight category” feasible for airplane weight estimation functions, suggesting in the system medical professionals are all thought about to be an ‘man’.

“To calculate the weight and balance of flights, non-gender specific prefixes such as Doctor are assigned the highest weight category, which the backend of our legacy IT system defines as ‘adult male’ in line with CASA guidelines,” the Jetstar agent informed Yahoo News.

Jetstar refuted it was bolstering sex prejudice. “We understand the importance of this issue to our customers and are looking for ways to provide more gender-inclusive options in the booking flow,” the agent stated.

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