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Iram Habib Becomes The First Kashmiri Muslim Woman To Become A Pilot
9-19-2018
Iram Habib (30), a resident of downtown Srinagar city, is the first and youngest woman from Srinagar to fly an aircraft. After completing her flying training from the US in 2016, Iram is now set to fly the aircraft of GoAir and IndiGo.
SRINAGAR: Amidst all the turmoil in the war-torn Kashmir, there are individuals who continue to triumph over mayhem repeatedly. With a burning passion of a thousand suns, thirty-year-old Iram has become the first Kashmiri Muslim woman to render services as a pilot.
Iram’s recruitment at a private airline as a licensed pilot is starting this month.
She is to succeed Tanvi Raina, a Kashmiri Pandit, who joined Air India as the Valley’s first woman pilot in 2016.
To achieve her dreams of becoming a pilot, Iram even had to relinquish acquiring a doctorate in forestry.
In conversation with an Indian daily, Iram, who is currently undertraining in Delhi to get a commercial pilot license, said, “Everyone was surprised to find that I am a Kashmiri Muslim doing flying but I went ahead to achieve my goal.”
Moreover, she received formal training as pilot in Miami, US in 2016.
According to a report published by The Tribune, Iram pursued her bachelor’s in forestry from Dehradun and post graduation in forestry from the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Kashmir.
Iram’s family wanted her to pursue Ph.D. in forestry and get a government job, but she did not abandon dreaming to become a pilot. “I pursued Ph.D. for one and a half years but left it and went to a US flight school,” she says. “I looked for things on my own and kept my dream alive,” the report quoted her as saying.
In 2016, Iram completed her training from Miami in the US and returned to India to get a commercial pilot license, but the journey was not easy. Iram had 260 hours of flying experience from the US and got a commercial pilot license in the US and Canada on the basis of her flying hours, the report said.
According to the report Iram was supported by her father to pursue her dream, her relatives and friends would always tell her that a girl from Kashmir would never get a job as a pilot.
Iram says that it is difficult for her relatives even now to believe that she flies an aircraft. “They still can’t believe I chose this profession and got a job too,” Iram says, adding she had also trained in Bahrain and Dubai in Airbus 320, the report mentioned.
“During my training and exams everyone would be surprised to see a woman from Kashmir as a pilot, but there was no discrimination. I worked hard and got a job offer from Indigo and GoAir. I am set to join as a first officer in Indigo next month,” says Iram, The Tribune reported.
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