An Air India flight from Bengaluru to Mumbai became the witness of an unforgettable mid-air send-off on Wednesday.
58-year-old Pooja Chinchankar who has spent the better part of her life working for India's state carrier as an air hostess got a befitting farewell from the flight’s pilot, who was none other than her daughter, Ashrrita Chinchankar.
While Pooja has been with the airline for the last 38 years, Ashrrita joined as a pilot only in 2016, in a bid to carry forward her mother’s legacy in the air.
After landing, the 31-year-old pilot posted a video on twitter showing her mother walking down the aisle for one last time, in her cabin crew uniform to a raucous applause of her colleagues and passengers who seemed delighted to be a part of their special moment.
While it was indeed an extraordinary achievement for the mother-daughter duo, it was also an epochal moment for women in India’s aviation industry, a sentiment that was shared by many Indians on social media.
Last year, 30-year-old Captain Anny Divya from Pathankot in the northern state of Punjab, had scripted history for women in the civil aviation industry by becoming the youngest female commander of a Boeing 777 aircraft in the world.
The momentous occasion was closely followed by another landmark achievement at the behest of the Indian Aviation industry when an all-female crew operated an Air India flight - setting a world record by flying all the way from New Delhi to San Francisco, the longest direct flying route, ahead of the International Women’s Day.
According to the International Society of Women Airline Pilots report, India has the highest percentage of women commercial pilots in the world.
The report released in 2017 states that out of 10,000 commercial pilots, 12 per cent are women.
