The elan with which women pilots are showcasing their skills at the ongoing Aero India 2011 makes gender divide sound like fiction. These female pilots are not burdened by their gender. Flying is all that matters and conquering the deep blue sky and roaring into it is what they want to do. In most of their cases, flying is a childhood dream and as kids, these pilots had literally toyed around with a miniature aircraft. Fascination for planes in many cases is older than that for cars and bikes.
Metrolife interacted with a few women pilots and also those women who work in the other sectors of the aviation and asked them what drove them and kept their energy soaring.
These women pilots have actually trained long and hard before they actually began flying a plane. They had to go through rigorous, laborious and rather rough training sessions just to strengthen their emotional and mental faculties.
Kavitha Prabhu, a flying officer says, it took nothing less than a year and a half to train on ground before she took to the skies.
Preeth D Souza, another flying officer says it’s not as tough as it looks.
Andrea Swank, a senior loadmaster with the C-17 US Air Force, says her job entails lifting heavy stuff, calculating the centre of gravity for take off and making sure the flight is not overloaded with cargo.
Caporal chef Vanessa Dahmani, who manages the anti freezing liquid on a Rafale, a French aircraft, says she works under strenuous conditions.
12/02/11 Nina C George/Deccan Herald
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