Nearly a year after IAF chief, Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha softly revealed to the world that his force would accept women pilots in the cockpits of their fighter planes comes an unexpected development. Following the commissioning of India’s first women fighter pilots in June this year, not a single lady cadet has volunteered to join the fighter aircraft stream. They’ve chosen to fly transport aircraft and helicopters, it was revealed.
The Air Force Academy (AFA) at Dundigal, outside Hyderabad, where cadets train before being commissioned has four women pilots in the current, 198th batch who’ve made the cut. “However, they’ve chosen options other than flying fighter planes. One has opted for the transport fleet and three have sought to join the helicopter fleet. This is strange, no doubt but I will not lose my sleep over it. It is an individual’s decision. Flying a fighter is a call for cadets to take provided they qualify. This shows the IAF has kept its doors open should we get good candidates,” explained a source.
A request for response made to the IAF spokesperson went unanswered. However, an insider explained, “It is this batch which has opted this way. The next may opt differently. If and when, not volunteering on the part of women officers in the fighter stream becomes a feature seen over many batches, do we really need to think why”.
The 198th batch will soon graduate and each of the individuals will be assigned their respective destinations, depending on the streams they chose whether flying, technical or ground duties.
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All services, for now, allow women to only join as officers. With the lifting of the last hurdle in the form of fighter plane flying, the IAF has now opened all streams to women. Though they’ve moved ahead from where they were earlier, the navy and the army still retain several streams where the entry of women is disallowed. Women officers in the IAF’s ‘Flying branch’ are allowed in through the short service commission which implies a maximum term of 14 years. Allowing women pilots to opt for fighter streams is currently on an ‘experimental basis for five years’.
Flying Officers Avani Chaturvedi, Mohana Singh and Bhawana Kanth, who were commissioned in the 197th batch as the first female pilots who had qualified to fly the fighter planes are undergoing their ‘Stage III’ training at Bidar in Karnataka. They are currently training on the British-made Hawk Advanced Jet Aircraft (AJT).
IAF’s training for the ‘Flying branch’ is divided into three stages. The first stage comprises of 24 weeks of training at AFA followed by the second stage involving 24 weeks at specialised establishments. Once they complete their third and final stage is when they begin operational flying with units assigned to them.
| YEAR | ARMY | NAVY | AIR FORCE |
| 2013 | 127 | 50 | 144 |
| 2014 | 104 | 57 | 155 |
| 2015 | 72 | 35 | 223 |
| 2016* | 37 | 20 | 85 |
*2016 figures as on August 5.
source: indiatoday
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