Captain Shruti Banaji finished her training sessions at about 5 am on Monday and within a few hours, at about 1 in the afternoon, she was back chatting with us. In high spirits, she stood tall and in complete charge. Women in India might take a little more time to rule the ground but they surely look ready to rule the skies.<\/p>\n
At about 12%, India has the highest proportion of female commercial pilots in the world. And the numbers are only growing. After all, the Indian aviation sector is supposed to be growing at the fastest rate in the world. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There is no pay disparity between male and female pilots. You get opportunities based on merit,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Shruti, who is also a Boeing 737 Type Rated Instructor with Jet Airways. She spends two weeks every month at the well-equipped CAE in Devanahalli in Bengaluru. CAE is an aviation training centre for pilots, where she undertakes sessions for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ab initio (new recruits), First officers, Captains, Line Training Captains to Type Rated Instructor.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
A pilot for 12 years with 9,500 hours of flying experience, Shruti says she is immensely satisfied with her growth and the number of opportunities that came her way. From a first officer, Shruti went on to become a line training captain and eventually an instructor. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Jet Airways has about 1,800 pilots, out of which 240 are women,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Shruti. The exposure and emphasis on the girl child has encouraged a lot of women to choose different types of careers. The myths had started to burst a long time ago, but with Avani Chaturvedi, Mohana Singh and Bhawana Kanth, the first batch of women fighter pilots being inducted in the Indian Air Force last year, the gender divide was broken further.
\nShruti feels that the boy is not looked at as the only earning member of the family now, and parents do not hesitate to spend on their daughter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s education.<\/p>\n
The daughter of a fighter pilot, Shruti fell in love with planes quite early on in life and was thrilled whenever she looked up and spotted an aeroplane. She had resolved to fly a plane. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My father told me that you have to get through to Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Akademi in Fursatganj, Uttar Pradesh, considered the IIT of aviation education, otherwise you are not doing it. With three-step tests to get in, it is pretty difficult to get admission there but I got through,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Shruti.<\/p>\n
In 2007, she joined Jet Airways where her first flight was from Delhi to Mumbai. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You really feel you have got wings,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she recalls. Over the years, people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attitude towards professional women has also changed. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Whenever we have an all-women-crew flight, I like to announce it and people are so happy. A lot of passengers don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t de-board, they wait to meet us. They ask us a lot of questions \u00e2\u20ac\u201d how does one fly a plane and how to become a pilot.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The young pilot is extremely passionate about flying and every day she heads back home feeling content. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I thought one day, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwhy do I love my job?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, and I realised that I get to finish what I set out to do every single day. The task isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t left unfinished. I finish the journey. I do a good job. I fly safely, efficiently and I land well and I am done.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Captain Shruti Banaji finished her training sessions at about 5 am on Monday and within a few hours, at about<\/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":[44,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jet-airways","category-pilot-jobs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384","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=2384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n05\/03\/19 Shailaja Tripathi\/The Hindu<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"