Mohana becomes first woman fighter pilot to fly Hawk jet

New Delhi: Flight Lieutenant Mohana Singh has become the first woman fighter pilot to fly by day on a Hawk advanced jet aircraft, an official statement said on Friday.

The statement said the woman officer landed after a gruelling 4-aircraft combat sortie at Kalaikunda Air Force station in West Bengal, which was the last syllabus sortie of being fully operational on the Hawk jets.

She and two other women officers - Bhawana Kanth and Avani Chaturvadi - joined the fighter stream in June 2016. Last week, Flight Lt Bhawana Kanth became the first daytime woman fighter pilot to fly a MiG-21 Bison.

Singh's training involved flying both air-to-air combat and air-to-ground missions. She has undertaken many practice missions which involved firing of rockets, guns and dropping high calibre bombs and has also participated in various Air Force level flying exercises.

She has a total of over 500 hours of incident-free flying of which 380 hours are on the Hawk Mk 132 jet.

Mohana Singh along with Bhawana Kanth and Avani Chaturvedi was commissioned in the Indian Air Force by then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar.

After the Indian government decided to open the selection of women in the Indian Air Force, these three were the first in the list to be selected.

Parrikar described the induction of these three young women in the air force as Red-Letter Day. He had also emphasisd on the fact that his ministry is working towards bringing total gender parity in the armed forces.

Flt Lt Parul Bharadwaj (Captain), Flying Officer Aman Nidhi (Co-Pilot) and Flight Lieutenant Hina Jaiswal (Flight Engineer) became country's first 'All Women Crew' to fly a medium lift helicopter.

Flt Lt Parul Bharadwaj is also the first woman to fly the Mi-17 V5 helicopter. She hails from Punjab's Mukerian. Interestingly, Flying Officer Aman Nidhi is also the first woman IAF pilot from Jharkhand.

She hails from Ranchi in Jharkhand. Moreover, Flight Lieutenant Hina Jaiswal is also the first woman flight engineer of the Indian Air Force. She hails from Chandigarh.