Flying the flag

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Two inspiring young Emirati women are forging a path for others in their historic role as the UAE’s first female cadet pilots. Madeleine Collins charts their journey.

It's not often that one is lauded as a pioneer when they've only just begun training for the very achievement they are being celebrated for. In fact, it could be considered downright suspect.

But when Salma Mohammed Al-Baloushi and Aisha Hassan Salim Al Mansoori got the call last June to inform them of their inclusion in a book entitled The 100 Greatest Women in Aviation by Liz Moscrop, it was after a long journey of hope and determination, not to mention undertaking a barrage of rigorous tests and fighting off skepticism about entering such a male-dominated field.

These two inspiring young women are the UAE's first female cadet pilots and part of Etihad's promotional campaign to encourage Emiratis into the fold.

I meet them at the very place their life has revolved around since gaining their place alongside ten men in the programme to ‘earn their Wings'. The scenic road from Al Ain city to the airport is flanked by undulating red desert hills and off to one side of the palm-lined road, a herd of camels potter.

One can only hope they don't have sensitive ears, because the airport is home to the Horizon Flight Academy (the ‘Top Gun' of the UAE), and cadet pilots fly ‘missions' over this serene location, often twice daily.

The huge orange Horizon Academy building blends in nicely with the surrounding desert and the airport hangar where I meet Al-Baloushi and Al Mansoori houses single-engine Cessna and double-engine Diamonds planes, which are used specifically for training.

Both women are dressed in standard Etihad pilot uniform and wear traditional black headscarves. It's not required by the airline, Al Mansoori tells me, but is a "personal choice".

The first thing that strikes me about this pretty, young woman is the quiet sense of calm she exudes - which clearly belies great character, given her choice of career - particularly when she tells me she is just 19 years old. This is one focused teenager.

Inspired by her experience flying at the Al Ain Airshow with Russian astronauts two years ago - " it was a zero gravity experience and I also got to see the cockpit, so it was really cool" - she wasted no time in taking her enthusiasm a significant step further.

"I was doing my finals at school and had my assessments for Etihad at the same time," she explains. "Even at my interview they said ‘how can you be sure you will pass?' And I said ‘I think I will pass'. They were shocked that I was confident enough to apply when I still hadn't finished school," she laughs. "I was the only one."

It is this subtle confidence that helped Al Mansoori gain her place among 11 other cadets within Etihad's programme, which was part of a large recruitment promotional campaign in the Arabic media in Spring 2007. The minimum entry age to become a pilot is 18 years old, and in order to open the cadet pilot programme to as many applicants as possible, Etihad increased the maximum entry age from 24 to 28 years-old.

"It was open to everyone," Thomas Clarke of Etihad tells me. "Like everything in this country slowly, but surely things do happen."

Taking to the skies was almost always on the cards for Al Mansoori. Her sister Marianne, 27, graduated from military college and flies a Hawk jet for the UAE armed forces, and her 24-year-old brother Ali, a helicopter pilot, also studied at Horizon.

"It was either this or five years in college," she says. "This was more fun!"

While she faced no opposition from her family regarding her choice of career, it took a little while longer for Al-Baloushi, 21, to convince her mother of her ambitions.

"I was at my mum's house when I received a message to say I had got an interview," she recalls, explaining she'd already applied by the time her father saw Etihad's advert in the newspaper, thanks to her uncle's help.

"When I first told my mum I had applied for a job with Etihad, she thought I meant for Etihad magazine. When I told her it was as a cadet pilot, she said ‘are you sure?' She still thought I meant as an air hostess. When she told the rest of the family I'd applied, they made fun of me," she giggles.

"They all said ‘Salma, come on make a coffee for me' and ‘air hostess, make a cup of tea for me'."

It was all good-natured ribbing though, and when interview day arrived she was all nerves. "I couldn't sleep all night. I was awake until I came to the interview and did the theory test."

In contrast to Al Mansoori's calm composure, Al-Baloushi is animated and chatters with great excitement, but the two women bonded early on after meeting during selection.

"We had to wait for eight months to finally get in and we called each other all time, asking ‘did they call you yet?'" recalls Al-Baloushi, who had been working as a nurse for one year at the time.

"We were waiting and hoping and doing so many tests. We did psych tests, personality tests - all in Arabic and English - sometimes for eight hours a day. It was exhausting."

Theory aside it was then time for the women to put what they learned into practice. Al Mansoori directs me inside the small Cessna jet in which they train, and which can climb to 6000 feet.

The engine is exposed and looks no bigger than a car engine, and a small fire extinguisher is wedged between the seats.

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