I went to drop off my bags before boarding my Jetstar flight. I was infuriated by what staff told me at the desk

Jetstar has been forced to deny it promotes gender bias after a female doctor shared her horrific experience with staff before she attempted to board a flight. 

Dr Amanda McConnell was flying from Cairns to Brisbane last month when Jetstar staff stopped her at the baggage check-in desk.

It was taking ages, and the flight attendant said, "Im 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", she told Yahoo.

Dr McConnell then had to wait for more than five minutes while a Jetstar worker manually input her details while other passengers waited behind her.

I was shocked that in 2025 theyve still got software that defaults doctors to being male. Its ridiculous, she said.

Dr McConnell even started a petition at change.org slamming the airline.

In todays 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 wrote.

This small but impactful change would make the travel experience smoother for all customers, especially those who are professionals and hold titles that may be misinterpreted by outdated systems, she said. 

Dr Amanda McConnell is angry that she was assumed to be male by Jetstar based on the fact she was a doctor

Jetstar said the title of Dr defaults to the highest weight category for plane weight calculations when customers check in for their flight

As of Wednesday morning the petition had 777 signatures with Dr McConnell claiming others had shared similar experiences.

Quite a few of my female doctor colleagues said, "Yes, that has also happened to us. Thats why we dont travel with Doctor as our title", Dr McConnell said.

A Jestar spokesman told Daily Mail Australia the airline does not assign a gender to the title of doctor on our customer-facing channels. 

The title defaults to the highest weight category possible for aircraft weight calculation purposes.

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 spokesman said.

Jetstar denied it was perpetuating gender bias and was open to changing the current setup.

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 spokesman said.

Weight on a plane is a significant safety issue.  

More weight requires more thrust from an aircrafts engines, more speed to get off the ground and more fuel, and the consequences of underestimating a planes weight are potentially serious.

Calculating the weight on a plane is a significant safety issue on takeoff

In 2020, European holiday airline Tui underestimated the takeoff weight of an aircraft by almost 1,200kg.

It was due to an IT glitch when 38 adult passengers, departing Birmingham for Majorca, identified themselves as Miss rather than Ms.

It caused the airlines software to classify them as children instead of adults, and to assign each a childs weight rather than an adults which was a difference of more than 30kg for each passenger.

As a result, the figures on the load sheet, which the pilot uses to determine the thrust and speed required for takeoff, were out by more than a tonne and Tui was forced to change its software.

In March 2009, an Emirates flight took off from Melbourne bound for Dubai, but as it approached the end of its takeoff roll and pitched upward for takeoff, the tail hit the ground and gouged through its aluminium skin until it ran out of runway.

Aware of the danger, the captain applied maximum thrust and, after ploughing a channel across 148m of Melbourne Airport turf, the aircraft took off.

In calculating the right takeoff speed, instead of inputting the aircrafts actual weight of 362.9 tonnes, the first officer hit the adjacent key and entered 262.9 tonnes.

That mistake meant the plane took off at 75km/h less than required to get it off the ground.