As a kid, Anju Varghese would run to the terrace of her apartment at every given opportunity to see the flights take off and land, residing in Santacruz helped as it gave a vantage view as the big birds took off or landed.
In the school when asked about her aspirations, she would promptly say,” to be a pilot and fly the skies”.
Her teachers would give her a condescending smile but her friends were more forthright,” You are a girl and that will never happen”.
Her dad accompanied her to a flying club in Trivandrum and the instructor there said,” Not at 16 but come back after three years and we shall see what we can do”.
She got admitted after reaching the mandatory minimum age and that started her tryst with flying and it soon became an addiction.
Her ambition was further fueled when her dad took her to Germany and that’s were she developed a love for gliding.
Anju said,” I just wanted to do some gliding and Germany is known through out the world as the Mecca of the sport. I flew over the Alps and since then there has been no looking back. I went to Germany as a tourist but fell so much in love with gliding and the facilities there that I stayed there for three years until I got a commercial pilot’s license. It was really tough as the exams were in German and I had to learn the language real fast to even sit for those theory exams.”
She had a lot of job offers from various airlines but she did not feel up to it. “Flying between two fixed locations repeatedly gets tedious pretty soon and so I offered myself as a freelancer and that helped me earn my bread. The best thing about a flying career is that one gets to meet different people from different cultures and that makes for so much experience especially when one is still in mid 20s”.
Today she runs AV Aviation that trains students to qualify for Airline Transport Pilot License. They screen students and only 8 students are selected in a batch and this job sees her shuffling between Frankfurt and Chennai.
She can’t help gushing at her good fortune. She avers,” If you are passionate about something then there’s no stopping you. I loved flying and it has taken me so far”.
Anju takes the same attitude to her flying school. “When I started, there was nobody to guide me. In addition there was no internet and I had no idea of marketing or how to enlist students. Now, thank God it has started well and now all I look for in my students is this passion for flying. If it’s there then my guidance will hone their skills and they can prepare for a career in aviation”.
Anju Varghese is a veteran in the field and she is just 32.
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