Kashmir gets its first Muslim woman pilot

SRINAGAR: Thirty-year-old Iram Habib has become the first Kashmiri Muslim woman to become a pilot. Habib will join a private airline next month.

Iram succeeds Tanvi Raina, a Kashmiri Pandit, who joined Air India as the Valley’s first woman pilot in 2016. In April last year, 21-year-old Ayesha Aziz, also from Kashmir, became India’s youngest student pilot. Iram’s road to becoming a pilot was never easy since it passed through the conservative Kashmiri Muslim society.

Her father is a supplier of surgical equipment to government hospitals. In her pursuit, Iram even gave up her dream of achieving a doctorate in forestry to give wings to her childhood ambition.


Iram, who is presently taking classes in Delhi to get a commercial pilot license, told TOI that she completed her training from Miami in the US in 2016. “Everyone was surprised to find that I am a Kashmiri Muslim doing flying but I went ahead to achieve my goal,” she said.