Another history for Indian women has been created on Saturday when Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar formally commissioned three women fighter pilots along with flight cadets with various branches of Indian Air force  at a combined graduation parade at the air force academy in Dundigal.

Avani Chaturvedi from Madhya Pradesh, Mohana Singh of Rajasthan and Bhawana Kanth of Bihar have stepped into a new chapter in Indian defence forces in their early 20’s.

Mohana’s father was a warrant officer in the IAF and her grandfather served as a fight gunner at Aviation Research Centre. So for Mohana, being a part of the Defence forces was like carrying forward the tradition in generation.  She said, "I wanted to carry on the family legacy of serving the nation by being in defence and what better way than fighter-flying," With a dream to fly the best IAF’s fighter aircraft Mohana makes her parents proud of her.

Mohana, Avani and Bhawana will be awarded the President’s commission as flying officers of the fighter combat stream by defence minister Manohar Parrikar. They will then be posted to either Bidar or Kalaikuda airbase to undertake  “transitional” fighter training in hawks, which includes learning intensive combats, manoeuvres and armament firing spread over a year to ensure  the rookie pilots can handle highly unforgiving old fighters like MiG-21s or relatively new multi-role ones like Sukhoi-30MKIs and Mirage 2000s.

Each has cleared the first stage of training and has about 150 hours of flying. After getting their wings tomorrow as flying officers, they will be trained for six months in the Advanced Jet Fighter, the British-built Hawk  and  they will be assigned as fighters in squadrons.

Also Read: Indian Air Force To Soon Introduce Women Fighter Pilots

By Prakriti Neogi