Sarla Thakral, born in 1916,was only 21 years old when she became the first Indian woman to earn a pilot’s license in India in the year1937.Her husband P.D.Sharma who already had nine pilots in the family was mainly instrumental in inspiring her. But after she lost her husband in an air crash in 1939,she abandoned flying and became a successful water colour painter. Prem Mathur of the Deccan Airways became the first Indian women Commercial Pilot in India in the year 1951.

In 1988, Captain Saudamini Deshmukh became the first Indian woman captain to command a Boeing 737. She also became the first Indian woman to command the Airbus A320 in 1994. Capt Deshmukh joined erstwhile Indian Airlines in 1980 as a co-pilot on the Fokker F27 Friendship turboprop aircraft. In her thirty years of flying, Capt. Deshmukh became the first Indian woman check pilot on the Fokker F27s in 1985 and in 1989 became the first captain to command an all-woman crew on a Boeing 737 from Calcutta to Silchar.

In the year of 1987 Capt.Durba Bannerjee became the first Indian Lady Commercial Pilot to fly a Airbus 300.

In the year 1985 women started entering into other areas of aviation too. The first ladies who joined Air Traffic Control in India in 1985 and later left soon after to join other professions. In the year 1989 two more ladies joined in ATC as Aerodrome Officers, of which one left to join another profession. The Lady Officer who remained was soon joined year after year and batch after batch by scores of lady Officers. Today India has more than hundreds of lady ATCOs.So have women entered also as Communication Engineers in Aviation from 1989 onwards. Today we have women working in all fields of aviation.

India took to wings only 7 years after the historic flight of the Wright brothers. It is believed that the first planes came to India and perhaps to Asia in 1910 though the first commercial civil aviation flight in India took off only on the 18th February 1911.

Since then India and Indians have never looked back.  Through the eventful decades, Indian civil aviation has flown from strength to strength and is today one of the fastest growing aviation markets in the world.

Contributing to this growth has been the undaunting spirit of our entrepreneurs, pilots, engineers, crew-members and scientists. Each one of us who contributed.

Let us today salute and celebrate the contribution of all the women and men, all the remarkable Indians who have steered aviation as it is now through thick and thin to reach to its present glorious heights.