An American airline celebrated the first ‘unmanned’ flight of it’s new fleet, but the new planes aren’t drones.

The flight was in fact the first time one of the new Boeing 737 Max 8 planes was manned by an entirely female crew, including both the pilots, reports Metro.

This isn’t a publicity stunt by Southwest Airlines to prove how progressive they are, the crew just noticed the absence of any men in their crew while preparing to take off on the flight from St Louis to San Francisco.

After grabbing a few snaps of the all-female crew they posted the images to Twitter, which the airline retweeted.

While most people celebrated the sight of an all-female crew, one bitter person tweeted at the airline: ‘If this was an all-male crew I don’t think y’all would be celebrating this event.’ However Southwest fired back with the perfect response.

Southwest has always been a fairly progressive company when it comes to gender equality in aviation.

In 2001 Colleen C Barrett became the first female president of a major airline when she appointed to the position in Southwest Airlines.

A study by Women in Aviation International found that only 6,7 per cent of pilots are female, making the chances of both pilots in a flight being women very low.