Green Signal For First Batch Of Women Fighter Pilots

New Delhi: On Saturday, history was created when India’s Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar formally commissioned three female fighter pilots along with flight cadets of various ranches of the India Air Force Academy in Dundigal.

Fight cadets Avani Chaturvedi of Madha Pradesh, Mohana Singh of Rajasthan and Bhawana Kanth of Bihar, all in their early-20s, usher in a new chapter for the Indian defence forces, which have for long opposed the induction of women in combat roles.

For Mohana, whose father is a warrant officer in the IAF and grandfather served as a flight gunner at Aviation Research Centre, being a part of the defence forces was a foregone conclusion. “I wanted to carry on the family legacy of serving the nation by being in defence and what better way than fighter-flying,” she said. With an aim to fly the best of the IAF’s fighter aircraft, Mohana aspires to make her parents proud of her. “I dream of being a part of future combat missions, and fight for the nation when duty calls,” she added.

Avani Chaturvedi had to abort her second solo flight sortie minutes before take-off. “As I started rolling for take-off near the first marker, I heard the Canopy Warning Audio,” she recounts. The warning, she says, “confused” her initially, but her hours of training took over and she “aborted” the take-off bringing the aircraft to a halt safely on the runway. For pilots, says Cadet Chaturvedi, it all about “split second” decisions. “Had I delayed aborting the take-off or got air borne with the open canopy, it would’ve been catastrophic,” she adds.

Flying cadet Bhawana Kanth said she was going in for her first ever solo spin and recovery manoeuvre when, flying at 20,000 feet, “doubt started creeping in,” on what would happen if the aircraft didn’t respond. She nonetheless, she went into a spin. “It was more vicious”, she says, adding, “The fighter pilot in me took over. The recovery action drilled ‘into us’ took over. The aircraft “recovered from spin and so did my confidence.”

The nation will see its first batch of female fighter pilots on June 18. In February 2016, President Pranab Mukherjee had announced that all military combat roles will be opened to women in the future.