Breaking barriers
Storyboard Text
- Hi I am Avani chaturvedi flying officer.The sortie was like any other that is carried out every day as a part of routine trainingand this was the first solo flight by me. when I was 24 I became the first Indian women to fly a solo sortie on a fighter aircraft.
- Just a year before, the Indian government had decided to admit women pilots in the fighter stream. It was to be on a trail basis for five year.Then, me and my friends Bhawana Kanth and Mohana singh became the first batch of women fighter pilots an were commissioned into the Indian Air Force in 2016.
- Women from a very small part of the nearly 1.4 million -strong Indian armed forces and this is what makes my achievement all the more remarkable.
- When I sit in the cockpit and close the cockpit cover,any feeling of achievement, empowerment, and so on are left on the ground. I don't carry them with me. The aircraft is so fast and the time to react to any situation is so little that we don't have time to think about anything else when I was asked what was going through her mind as I pushed the jet to 700 kilometres per hour.
- On my second sortie of the day, during the training, there was a warning as I was preparing to take off. Immediately, I decided to abort the take off. That day, I realised how the decision made in a split second can get the situation under control or push it out of control. Had I delayed my decision to cancel the take off or taken off with the cockpit cover open, the consequences could have been disastrous.
- The Indian Air Force has a three stage process for training pilots. In stage 1, pilots have to practice flying in a basic aircraft for 55 hours; while in stage 2, they have to practice flying for 87 hours in an advanced jet trainer. After this training, the trainees are separated into different streams, according to what they will be flying helicopter, transport planes, or fighter jets.
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