Ahead of International Women’s Day
on March 8, we meet Captain Shruti Banaji, who tells us that there is noroom
for gender divide in the cockpit
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.
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. “There is no pay
disparity between male and female pilots. You get opportunities based on
merit,” says Banaji, who is also a Boeing 737 Type Rated Instructor with Jet
Airways. She spends two weeks every month at CAE in Devanahalli in Bengaluru.
CAE is an aviation training centre for pilots, where she shares with pilots the
latest developments, hands out useful information and gives them training on
simulators.
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. “Jet Airways has about 1,800 pilots, out of which
240 are women,” says Banaji. 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.
Banaji
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’s education.
The
daughter of a fighter pilot, Banaji 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. “My 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,” says Banaji.
In
2007, she joined Jet Airways where her first flight was from Delhi to Mumbai.
“You really feel you have got wings,” she recalls. Over the years, people’s
attitude towards professional women has also changed. “Whenever we have an
all-women-crew flight, I like to announce it and people are so happy. A lot of
passengers don’t de-board, they wait to meet us. They ask us a lot of questions
— how does one fly a plane and how to become a pilot.”
The
young pilot is extremely passionate about flying and every day she heads back
home feeling content. “I thought one day, ‘why do I love my job?’, and I
realised that I get to finish what I set out to do every single day. The task
isn’t left unfinished. I finish the journey. I do a good job. I fly safely,
efficiently and I land well and I am done.”
Of
course, the job comes with its own set of challenges, such as regularly
changing the body clock, jet lag, low humidity and flying on festival days,
special occasions when you would want to be home. “In that case, there are a
lot of jobs which require you to be away from family and are physically
challenging, these days. But I wouldn’t advise anyone to become a pilot just
for money. If you do become a pilot for money, you will burn out soon. You need
to have a passion for flying and what keeps us going is books. There is so much
advancement happening in this field and so regularly and one needs to be aware
of all that, so books never leave us.”
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Source: THE HINDU-6th March,2019
