SRINAGAR: Thirty-year-old Iram Habib, a resident of downtown Srinagar is set to become the first Kashmiri Muslim woman to fly a commercial aircraft.
Though she studied forestry from the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, she did not let her childhood ambition die.
“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 Tribune quoted Iram as saying.
Habib, belongs to a conservative Kashmiri Muslim society got the support from her father, a supplier of surgical equipment to government hospitals.
In 2016, Tanvi Raina, a Kashmiri Pandit, joined Air India as the Valley’s first woman pilot. Ayesha Aziz, 21, became India’s youngest student pilot last year.
Iram completed her training from Miami in the US in 2016 and is presently taking classes in Delhi to get a commercial pilot license. She will join as a first officer in Indigo next month.
“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,” she added.