She wants to fly MiG-29

Long before Ayesha Aziz learned to fly, the sound of planes flying over her house near the Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai would pump up her excitement. She felt like being there, up in the sky, afloat -- unlike frightened children of her age. After completing her 10th class in 2011, Ayesha became the youngest Kashmiri girl to be awarded a student pilot licence from the prestigious Bombay Flying Club. And in about four months, the 21-year-old girl is going to fly an MiG-29 fighter jet at Russia’s Sokul airbase, in Nizhniy Novgorod, the land of Maxim Gorki, about 400km east of Moscow. 

She may become the youngest Indian girl to pilot the Russian combat aircraft (called Fulcrum by NATO), which entered service with the Soviet Air Force in 1982. The Sokul airbase has a flight club that invites people to participate in its activities. “We are in communication with an agency in Russia. It requires a lot of money and I am looking for sponsorship. I want to fly MiG-29 -- it will be fascinating to fly at 80,000 feet,” Ayesha told The Tribune.

Recalling her childhood, Ayesha said: “Anything flying in the area would give me a strange feeling, surprisingly, a kind of music, the best music”. 

While travelling with her family to different places, all she would like to talk about were the aircraft. She would ask questions about the types of commercial aircraft, the jets the Air Force would fly and other planes. The elders would at times find themselves at loss over too many questions.

“I was an ambitious kid. During our travel, I was attracted to planes of all types,” she said. A year after she was awarded a student pilot licence in 2011, she was selected by a NASA panel for a space training program in the United States. She completed two-month advanced training at NASA’s Space Academy, Huntsville, in Space Shuttle Mission, micro-gravity and Extra Vehicular Activity.

After completing her 12th class from Christ Church School in Mumbai in 2013, she joined Bombay Flying Club for bachelors in aviation. Simultaneously, she received the commercial pilot licence and has flown Cessna 172R and 152R aircraft for 200 hours. Ayesha’s mother Khalida Aziz hails from north Kashmir’s Baramulla district and her father Abdul Aziz is a Mumbai-based industrialist.

Ayesha feels pained by perpetual cycle of violence in the Valley. “Kashmir is my motherland. I feel sad when I hear about people dying in Kashmir,” she said. Ayesha has a house in Baramulla which she frequently visits.