AIR TRANSPORT Women in aviation

Why does India lead the world in equality on the flightdeck – with the highest percentage of female commercial pilots? NEELAM MATHEWS explains how women are getting their wings.

"The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organisation but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights.” Gloria Steinem

Mention the words ‘woman aviator’ and the name of Amelia Earhart generally pops up the world over. Not so much in India, which has seen its share of women pilots in the 1930s, with the likes of Sarla Thakral, the first Indian woman to fly in 1936, as she was engulfed by six yards of her sari in the cockpit of a Gypsy Moth.

But closed mindsets and ‘It’s a man’s world’ attitudes have prevented aviation from being a preferred career for women. Barring inflight crew, jobs such as pilots, mechanics and air traffic controllers have traditionally been a male domain. For instance, when Durba Banerjee (below) set off to break stereotypes and venture into flying a Dakota as a DC3 pilot in 1959 and seven years, looking join Indian Airlines (now merged with Air India) as a commercial pilot, was instead offered the post of a flight attendant! Life moved for her. With the arrival of the B737-200 series, she got herself type rated as a jet pilot to fly the aircraft. She also flew the Airbus A300. The woman of grit earned 18,500 flying hours, paving the way for more to follow her contrails.

Rise of the female aeronaut

Things are expeditiously changing as the ‘invisible force’ (women) ensures it gets its ‘space’ in the new world order. India has a ratio of 949 females to 1,000 men. There are clear signs that the number of women entering aviation are rising, as India’s population gets younger, educated and tech-savvy. Presently, the country has over 50% of its population below the age of 25 and over 65% below 35 years of age. By the end of 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan.

Captain Durba Banerjee.​The young women of India are smart and come from a culture where women held a dignified position in society. “Give it to the Indian culture to make it happen and allow them to follow such jobs,” Harpreet A De Singh President Indian Women Pilots Association (IWPA) and Executive Director Air India told AEROSPACE.

Air India, the national carrier, being the only airline in India for decades, set the trend when it operated its first all-women crew flight in 1985 in a Fokker Friendship Flight from Kolkata to Silchar in Assam, a one and a half hour jet flight. Thirty-two years later, on Women’s International Day, Air India became the first airline to fly around the world with an all-female crew. The Boeing 777 flew from New Delhi to San Francisco over the Pacific Ocean. The crew completed a mandatory rest period before flying over the Atlantic back to New Delhi, completing the round-the-world trip.

In 1998, a postage stamp, released to commemorate Indian women in aviation, was a tribute to this imperceptible force that tirelessly strides forward increasing its ilk while bridging the gap towards gender equality. The numbers are telling. Already Air India has the highest percentage of women pilots in the world – over 15%. Budget airline market leader IndiGo has around 13% of women pilots, up from 10% five years ago. Equal pay makes the career attractive, as salaries are based on seniority and flying hours following agreements struck with unions.

While the Covid-19 crisis has virtually brought to a standstill the world’s fastest-growing domestic aviation market, it is likely to move full circle once orders for fleet gather pace and skill shortages in the sector return. The present is proving to be the right time to motivate and carry forward projects, such as those of Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Programme that looks to encourage girls from 15- to 18 years of age to consider jobs in aviation when making career choices.

Mentoring the future

Mentoring is the new mantra in India to encourage girls to enter numerous fields related to aviation. A big effort has been made by the 50-year old (IWPA). “Although we call ourselves the women pilots’ organisation, our membership is open to air traffic controllers, flight dispatchers, engineers, airport managers, skydivers, educators, students – heck, anyone interested in aviation is welcome,” Harjeet said. IWPA engages in educational, charitable and scientific activities to promote aeronautical science and fosters aerospace education among young girls while granting scholarships. It also encourages aero-sport, including gliding, aero-modelling, hang-gliding and microlight flying. Imparting training to women pilots, ground school refreshers, IWPA has also catalogued an aviation library on women.

The 1998 Indian postage stamp released to commemorate Indian women in aviation.

Harjeet says often the gender bias works against the men too, as women are generally the favourite choice for cabin crew. “This gender ratio too has to be corrected. In Air India we make sure the ratio is somewhat even for women and men at 60:40.” 

However, there are glaring gaps. Being the only female on the top of the ladder, as Chief of Safety, Harjeet says: “there is a need to get women into top management positions that will serve as role models to the younger generation. She says that; generally the only arena you will find a woman is the Human Resource division, as it is related to welfare.” She moans that there is no director of engineering, operations and in technical areas. “Sometimes,” she adds, “women are their own defaulters, as they prefer to stay in their comfort zone and a pilot that could have moved into engineering could not be bothered to.

As for her, she is surrounded by men in the office… I have got used to it.” During the Covid-19 crisis, she has been busy organising evacuation and medical flights, including carrying out risk assessments at airports. Her job got busier during India’s lockdown as, just in the week of 7 May, around 15,000 stranded Indians were flown back to Indian cities in 64 Air India flights from the world over.

Tulsi Mirchandaney heads South Asia’s only stand-alone cargo airline Blue Dart Aviation.

Keeping the orange white and green flying

Many of the pilots flying out of India during the crisis have been women – both young and senior – treating the job as ‘carrying out a duty for the nation.’ Among these is Nivedita Bhasin, who recently flew her 787 to Guangzhou to bring back medical kits. “It was a terrifying situation initially. We did not know who was a (Covid-19) carrier and who was not. Also at the beginning we had neither protective suits nor N-95 masks… But it was a humanitarian mission and we couldn’t say no.”

Despite retirement closing in on her, she lives an exuberant life with a passion for flying. Interestingly, her husband, two children and father-in-law – together have nearly 100 years of flying among them. In 1990, she became the youngest woman in civil aviation history to command a commercial jet aircraft at the age of 26 and, as life progressed, flew in India’s first 787 that she presently commands. Having overcome many blockades to find her rightful place in a male-dominated line of work in the eighties, it was a struggle to find a balance between home and work, she explains. As the first pilot in Air India to become a mother, the years following her first child led to Air India outlining its policy on maternity leave. Her daughter, who has looked up to her mom as her role model, is at 28, a Captain on the A320 at budget IndiGo.

Interestingly, Tulsi Nowlakha Mirchandaney, Managing Director and Accountable Manager for Blue Dart Aviation, India’s only scheduled cargo airline and South Asia’s largest with a fleet of six Boeing 757 freighters, says the person she admires the most is Lee Kwan Yew, First Prime Minister of Singapore, “for his vision, independent thinking, execution capability and nation-building – a life of great meaning and purpose, with a rich legacy for so many.” Unlike many, Tulsi never suffered from discrimination of being female, being brought up in a nurturing environment with her two supporting brothers. At Blue Dart Aviation, she spearheaded First Choice, the Group’s continuous improvement programme, and also initiated the CSR programme. She has been instrumental in expanding the company’s infrastructure across airports, and helping bring about policy changes in civil aviation to acknowledge the contribution of air express, and support the distinctive requirements for the sustainability of the cargo airline industry in the country.

Air India’s all-women crew celebrates the proud moment before their flight in 2016, which at the time was the ‘world’s longest’ all-women operated and supported flight, from Delhi to San Francisco.

Expanding opportunity​

Mentors are flourishing in India. Women in Aviation India chapter, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to women striving for careers in aviation launched four years ago as part of the US-based WAI and Lockheed Martin India, have spurred a movement to motivate Year 9 to 12 girls in schools to follow their dreams. Lockheed Martin, which has a woman at the helm – Chairwoman, President and CEO Marillyn Hewson – “has a diverse workforce in every sense; and our objective is to substantially raise the percentage of women (aviation) employees in India,” said a senior official. A typical event carried out in over 20 airports in India by WAI and LM India includes taking the schoolgirls around the airport to introduce them to various aspects of aviation from design of the terminal, air traffic control tower, fire department, maintenance hangars, ground handling, IT, marketing, flight attendants, pilots and management. “The response has been awe-inspiring,” says Radha Bhatia, President WAI India and Chairman of the Bird Group in India, a market leader. “We aim to empower girls with the requisite skill sets to take up aviation as a viable career option. The industry has changed radically in the past 50 years “when you found women only at counters and never in sales”, says Radha, who got into the business as soon as she got married.

Anny Divya, LinkedIn global influencers and the world’s youngest female pilot to fly the Boeing 777 inspires a group of young Indian girls. Anny Divya; via the author.

Events by WAI have inspired girls to think out of the box. Today, there is a storm of motivation brewing to do more to educate, train and recognise future women in aviation. “We never thought aviation had a role in every career one can think of, before this,” said a young girl attending a ‘Girls in Aviation Day’ meet at Jaipur airport who wanted to be an architect and decided now she would like to design airports. Another who dreamt of becoming an electronics engineer said she was considering designing cockpit dispays. Another looking to join the civil service said she would love to work in the Directorate General of Civil Aviation office.

Impatient to move faster, Radha says much more work can and should be done. This is despite her offering scholarships at the Bird Academy that teaches aviation skills to deserving women. For the first time in India, at the Kochi airport in South India, Radha has made an innovative decision where pushback operators and baggage and food handlers are mainly women. “They (women) are loyal, dedicated, straight forward and trustworthy. Also, they stick around longer than men.”

The final Chapter – A 50/50 balance?

An all female Air India Express flight crew.​The WAI India Chapter founded by Radha was the way forward for women’s empowerment, she says. Founding members of the India Chapter represent a diverse mix of professions related to aviation, from pilots and cabin crew, a regulator, aerospace journalist, lawyer, activist, airport senior management, ground handler and an MD of India’s only cargo airline. A common experience among many in this mix is that they have had to battle against the dissent of family members to get where they are today. Shweta Singh, deputy chief flying operation inspector at India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation, and a former captain with Jet Airways was inspired by her father, a fighter pilot. “But he was keen on me becoming a doctor.” After a stint at dentistry which she disliked, finally she got her way and joined a flying school in Texas. A similar story of endurance and grit is of Captain Priti Sidharth Singh, a pilot with Air India Express, who married into a traditional political family used to seeing its women indoors rather than soaring the skies.

The words of Tulsi ring true when asked how she operates her business different from a man. “I think it’s more of an individual characteristic, rather than a gender one. I tend to be disciplined, hard-working and detailed, dream about the future and value learning. Women are supposed to be good at multi-tasking, and I find myself doing that a lot.”

Though it might be paradoxical that a developing country has the highest percentage of women pilots, India was also the second nation in the world to have had a woman prime minister in 1966, after neighbour Sri Lanka. The principle of gender equality is enshrined in the Indian Constitution that not only grants equality to women, but also empowers the State to adopt measures of positive discrimination in favour of women. That has yet to be witnessed in aviation.

Will the gender mix in aviation ever be 50/50? “I doubt I’ll see it in my lifetime. But I certainly see more and more women in the cockpit of commercial aircraft

RAeS Amy Johnson Lecture 2020, Webinar, 28 July 2020, to register your interest please contact: rosalind.azouzi@aerosociety.com


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