BSF air wing gets first woman flight engineer in over 50 years

The Border Security Force (BSF) air wing has got its first woman flight engineer in its over 50 years history following completion of a first in-house training capsule.

Inspector Bhawna Chaudhary along with four male subordinate officers were recently awarded their flying badges by BSF director general Daljit Singh Chawdhary.

The border force is tasked to operate the aviation unit of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) since 1969 and it caters to the operational requirements of all the paramilitary forces and special forces like the NSG and the NDRF.

Officials said that five subordinate officers were "trained ab-initio by the instructors of the BSF air wing and they recently completed their two-month long training."

The five personnel were skilled for 130 hours during the two months in-house training starting August and they also had real exposure to the work as various assets of the BSF air wing flew operational sorties including during the recent floods in Punjab and other states.

"The BSF air wing has been facing a critical shortage of flight engineers in its Mi-17 helicopters fleet. The Indian Air Force (IAF) trained the first batch of 3 subordinate officers but the second batch of five personnel could not get a training slot there due to various constraints," an official said.

The BSF then approached the MHA to allow it to conduct an in-house training for preparing flight engineers for its air wing and the five personnel including Inspector Chaudhary recently completed their training, the official said.

Inspector Chaudhary is the first women flight engineer of the BSF air wing, he said.

The unit operates a fixed wing Embraer jet for VIP duties apart from helicopters such as Mi 17 1V, Mi 17 V5, Cheetah and ALH Dhruv.

The about 3 lakh personnel strong BSF was raised in December, 1965, and it is primarily tasked to guard Indian borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh apart from rendering a variety of duties in the internal security domain of the country.