{"id":597,"date":"2008-03-17T08:05:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-17T08:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/indianaviationnews.net\/avicareers\/?p=597"},"modified":"2008-03-17T08:05:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-17T08:05:00","slug":"just-me-and-my-aircraft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/2008\/03\/just-me-and-my-aircraft.html","title":{"rendered":"Just me and my aircraft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: rgb(153, 0, 0);\">Hyderabad<\/span>: Salva Sidiqui is on a journey she can barely believe. Since last March, Salva has been training to be a commercial pilot, the only Muslim in a class of 30. These are youngsters hoping to plug the short supply of qualified Indian flyers that the booming airline industry faces, its rapid growth forcing it to import pilots.<br \/>Salva cuts a rare sight, her 5\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 2\u00e2\u20ac\u009d frame clad in a starched, buttoned-down, full-sleeved white shirt with black and gold lapels, teamed with natty black trousers \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and her bespectacled face framed by the soft folds of a hijab. Her ensemble reflects the changing world inhabited by the city\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s young Muslims, citizens of a new Hyderabad with their roots firmly in the Old City.<br \/>The 19-year-old is the first person in her family to complete school \u00e2\u20ac\u201d her father Syed, now a delivery man with a bakery, dropped out of school, and her mother Syeda was never allowed to study.<br \/>In 2006, Salva\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life took a turn when a local scholarship body, energised by the bright junior college student\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ambition, offered to fund the prohibitively expensive flying course.<br \/>Today, more Indians than ever before can afford a flight. Salva\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s family isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t there, yet. The only time Syed took a flight was a decade ago, when he joined South India\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great faceless migration of labour to West Asia, to work in a Jeddah hotel.<br \/>Salva can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stop marvelling at the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153different\u00e2\u20ac\u009d road her life has taken, including the long hours of study \u00e2\u20ac\u201d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153navigation, air traffic regulations, aeronautical maps, weather, instruments in the cockpit&#8230; the exams are hard work, and you have to score 75 per cent to pass!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she says happily.<br \/>Twenty hours into the mandatory 200 flying hours she must clock to qualify, and the teen still cannot get over that first high: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Each time I am up in the skies, the world looks so beautiful. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like there is just me and my aircraft.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/><span style=\"color: rgb(153, 0, 0);\">17\/03\/08 Chitrangada Choudhury\/Hindustan Times<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hyderabad: Salva Sidiqui is on a journey she can barely believe. Since last March, Salva has been training to be<\/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-597","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\/597","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=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}