Meet Nivedita Bhasin, the Youngest Woman Pilot to Command a Jet Plane

At a time when not many women pilots were in the world, Meet Nivedita Bhasin, the Youngest Woman Pilot to Command a Jet Plane

Even as a kid Nivedita Bhasin wanted to fly, she wanted to be a pilot. This was a time when not many women were in the aviation sector.  In 1989, Nivedita Bhasin became the youngest woman pilot in world civil aviation history to command a commercial jet aircraft.

When she was 16, Nivedita joined the local gliding club and learned to bring an engineless aircraft to the land. When she was 20, she joined Indian Airways (which later joined Air India) as a pilot. She was the third ever women pilot in the Indian Airlines.  

At the age of 26, she received her command on a Boeing 737 and became the youngest woman captain of a jet plane in the world. Seven years later, she went on to become the commander of an Airbus 300. With over 22,000 hours of flying, she was also the co-pilot in the world’s first all-women crew flight in 1985. In 2011, she even participated in a dangerous mission rescuing Indian nationals trapped in Libya during the civil war. The same year she became the first female pilot to serve as Air India’s chief safety officer.

Interestingly, both her children also chose the same path as her mother and they both are pilots too. With her husband being a pilot too the whole Bhasin family is of pilots.

Credit: The Better India

-Staff Reporter