{"id":162,"date":"2007-06-17T21:50:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-17T21:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/indianaviationnews.net\/avicareers\/?p=162"},"modified":"2007-06-17T21:50:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-17T21:50:00","slug":"women-in-the-cockpit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/2007\/06\/women-in-the-cockpit.html","title":{"rendered":"Women in the cockpit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-size:180%;\" >T<\/span>he flight from Prem Mathur, the first Indian woman to become a commercial pilot more than 50 years ago, to the youngest commercial pilot, 18-year-old Japji Kaur Cheema, has been a long one but women are finally chasing their lofty dreams.<br \/>At the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfa.be\/training-facilities\/self-sponsored\/phoenix\/index.htm\">Sabena Airline Training Center<\/a> in the US, three girls from diverse backgrounds have finished their first solos. Tanvitha, a 21-year-old from Bangalore is a BE in mechanical engineering. Shiv Priya Kapur, 23, has abandoned boring hotel management for her thrilling new career while Kanika Mehra, an electrical engineering graduate from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh, is realising a childhood dream to fly with parental approval.<br \/>Once their training \u00e2\u20ac\u201d sponsored by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unitedaviation.in\/registration.asp\">SpiceJet<\/a>  is over \u00e2\u20ac\u201d they&#8217;ll join the growing ranks of professional women pilots in the country.<br \/>That the doors of the cockpit are opening to the fairer sex is vouched for by flying schools. Captain Mamta, who runs <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flytechaviation.com\/\">Fly Tech Aviation <\/a>in Hyderabad, says the intake of women trainees has increased by 10-12% in the last two years. Recalling her own days as a student, she says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153From one or two women in a batch of 100 students, it&#8217;s now around 10 or 12.&#8221;<br \/>Indian has 76 women pilots, and the number is rising with every new batch. Forty of Air Deccan&#8217;s 496 pilots are women, says Pratyasha Singh, the airline&#8217;s corporate communications officer. Even the crew shuttle buses at its Chennai base are driven by women.<br \/>Kingfisher, which has 26 women from a total of 390 pilots, got its first woman captain just recently.<br \/>And with so much interest in aviation, how come women have not yet ventured into another uncharted territory \u00e2\u20ac\u201d flying helicopters?<br \/>&#8220;Choppers have attracted few women as compared to fixed wing aircrafts because they are riskier and the pay isn&#8217;t as lucrative,&#8221; explains D A Yadav, public relations manager of Pawan Hans. But the winds of change are blowing here as well. After a gap of many years, the company is now getting ready to welcome its first woman pilot into the fold.<br \/><span style=\"color: rgb(153, 0, 0);\">17\/06\/07 Amrita Singh &amp; Neelam Raaj\/Times of India<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The flight from Prem Mathur, the first Indian woman to become a commercial pilot more than 50 years ago, to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}