{"id":850,"date":"2008-12-05T12:28:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-05T12:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/indianaviationnews.net\/avicareers\/?p=850"},"modified":"2008-12-05T12:28:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-05T12:28:00","slug":"her-flight-of-fancy-turns-family-fortune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/2008\/12\/her-flight-of-fancy-turns-family-fortune.html","title":{"rendered":"Her flight of fancy turns family fortune"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gandhinagar:<\/span> Her father calls her the puttar’ of the family. For, few girls dream of becoming a pilot in Mangrol taluka of Junagadh district.
However, geography was no deterrent for Hetal Sondarva, who did the unthinkable. Today, she has not just charted her own course as a co-pilot with Kingfisher Airlines, but set a precedent for her two brothers.
But, this flight of fancy did run into turbulence for a brief period. Preparing for a career in aviation doesn’t come easy on the pocket. And Hetal’s father, Arjun Sondarva, assistant manager at New India Assurance Company Ltd, realised this when their loan amount fell short for financing his daughter’s lofty aspirations. So much so, that he had to finally sell his house to fulfil the requirement!
This, at a time when he already had a lot of criticism to contend with, for investing so much money to let his daughter follow her dream. “Many friends and relatives would say that I was wasting my money. According to them, my daughter would eventually get married and the huge amount of money would go in vain,” he says.
But Arjun’s efforts paid off and Hetal became the family’s first pilot in 2004. Now, she is married to colleague Shreesh and the couple is settled in Bangalore.
Her younger brother, Alpesh, followed suit. After completing a BE in IT from Nirma University, he’s now a co-pilot with SpiceJet. Jay, the baby of the family, is also studying in Florida en route to conquering the skies. The Sondarva family still lives in a rented house, now having shifted to Gandhinagar. Hailing from a small village, Lathodra in Junagadh district, Arjun recollects how he had to work and study simultaneously. His wife, Hiraben, is a primary school teacher in Vavol village near Gandhinagar.
“I’ve always believed that girls and boys should be treated equally. When Hetal decided she wanted to become a pilot, I encouraged her,” says the proud papa.
As for Hetal, she says she owes everything to her parents. “For them, I am a third son. When I quit engineering, to become a pilot, they welcomed my decision though few girls opt for this profession,” she told TOI from Bangalore. Many girls have high-flying dreams, but are unable to fulfil them because of archaic parental and societal attitudes towards girls, says the pilot who controls A320s and A321s today.
05\/12\/08 Vijaysinh Parmar\/Times of India<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gandhinagar: Her father calls her the puttar’ of the family. For, few girls dream of becoming a pilot in Mangrol<\/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-850","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\/850","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=850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}