The Trending News That Grabbed The Attention: Captain Zoya Aggarwal Created History By Flying World's Longest Air Route

Zoya Aggarwal, the Air India Pilot made history in January when she took command of flight AI176, which flew the longest route between San Francisco and Bengaluru. To get to Bengaluru, the pilot flew over the North Pole and across the Atlantic.

She grabbed the headlines on January 9, 2021, when she became the first woman in the world to fly across opposing poles, leading the first all-women cockpit to fly the world's longest air route. Zoya along with the other crew members was greeted at the airport with banners and cheers by the Air India staff after the successful completion of the 17-hour journey.

On Facebook, her voyage has received approximately 10,000 'reactions,' as well as hundreds of comments and 'shares.' Several praiseworthy comments like she is an inspiration and hope for other girls to follow their dreams as well, headed the comment section. Her journey became the event of applause and became the trending news headline all across the social media platforms.

She expressed her struggle for achieving her dream as it had not been that easy for her to reach the place where she is today. When she was stuck, she remembered eight-year-old Zoya's dream where she had the bravery to follow her heart.

She spoke about her early aspiration of becoming a pilot, how she worked to achieve it, and how she made history in the process. According to Zoya, she said that growing up in a lower-middle-class family in the 90s meant people are not permitted to dream beyond their means. Even so, she knew she wanted to be a pilot since she was eight years old. In her younger days, she wondered while looking into the sky and flying airplanes that if she would be able to fly one of the planes and would be able to touch the stars.

She was first hesitant to tell her parents about her goal, especially after overhearing her mother declare that as Zoya grew older, she would have to be married off into a good household. She told her parents she wanted to be a pilot after finishing 10th grade. Her mother began to cry, and her father was concerned about the cost of pilot training.

In Class 11 and 12, she rejected their wishes and studied Science. She did well in her 12th-grade exams and decided to major in Physics for her graduation. She also applied for an aviation school, which she could pay for with the money she had saved over the years.

Zoya Agarwal went to college for three years before leaving for her aviation course in another area of town. She would get home about 10 p.m. and then sit down to finish her homework.

Later her father hesitantly took out a loan for her further course which she repaid later. After the wait of two years, she got the opportunity where she competed against 3,000 applicants and after clearing several rounds, finally, she became the Air India as a First Officer in 2004, a report published by NDTV

"I'd finally touched the stars!" she exclaimed as she boarded her first flight to Dubai. Ms. Agarwal shares her story with the Humans of Bombay. She never looked back from this stage. She even volunteered to lead rescue operations during the outbreak.