SINGAPORE – In 2004, then Singapore Airlines flight attendant Vanessa Khaw regularly entered the cockpit to hand the pilots their meals.

Catching the astonishing sight of the sunrise from the flight deck inspired her dreams of becoming a pilot, to see those views every day.

Now a pilot of 15 years with SIA’s budget airline Scoot and Tigerair, which was merged with Scoot, Captain Khaw flies Airbus A320 and A321 narrow-body planes, and was appointed a flight instructor half a year ago, training pilots who join the airline.

While she has already achieved the rank of a captain, she said: “I’m still constantly improving and thinking about what’s next – which is why I went on to apply to be a flight instructor. It’s another challenge for me to take on, and I’m enjoying it.”

The 41-year-old is one of the 61 female pilots at SIA and Scoot who make up 1.9 per cent of SIA Group’s 3,245 pilots, according to the group’s latest Sustainability Report covering April 2023 to March 2024.

This is marginally higher than the 1.6 per cent from April 2022 to March 2023, and 1.4 per cent from April 2021 to March 2022, and almost on a par with Jetstar Asia, where about 2 per cent of its 128 pilots are women.

While more women here are becoming commercial pilots, their numbers lag behind other countries’.

In India, 14.4 per cent of its pilots are women, according to national civil aviation statistics for the period from 2022 to 2023. At Australia’s national carrier Qantas, women currently make up around 7.5 per cent of the pilots.

On the slower growth of the number of female pilots in Singapore, Ms Mabel Kwan, vice-president of the Singapore chapter of Women in Aviation, said that many young women may be unaware of the viability of pursuing a career as a pilot, or do not know about the pathways they need to take to become a pilot.

She added that some may have misconceptions of the dangers associated with flying and mistakenly believe that there is no work-life balance as a pilot.

Collaborative efforts with airlines, training programmes and awareness initiatives that tell the stories of successful female pilots – especially to the younger generation – could turn this around, she said.

Ms Kwan also noted that previously, aspiring pilots had to be accepted by an airline in order to be trained as a pilot. But now, they can learn to fly at training schools that provide local ground school preparation here and facilitate further training in countries such as Australia and the US.

Female pilots were few and far between in 2010, and Capt Khaw recalls that her fellow pilots were surprised to see her in the flight deck in her early days.

But she has observed more female pilots joining Scoot over the years, and they keep in touch over an all-women pilots’ chat group.

She said: “Actually, I’ve stopped identifying myself as a ‘female pilot’. I’m just a pilot, because actually, the expectations are the same. Whether you’re male or whether you’re female, you still have to meet the standards.”

While taking part-time lessons for a private pilot licence in Johor Bahru, she set her mind on becoming a pilot for the rest of her life.

She quit her cabin crew job in 2007 after 3½ years, and trained for and obtained a commercial pilot licence at Singapore Flying College in 2009, funding most of the six-figure cost herself and getting loans from her family to cover the remaining sum.

Her family, worried that the male-dominated industry would not be suitable for her, did not support her decision, telling her that being a pilot was “a job for men” and that “no one would want to marry you”, she recalled. But she convinced them otherwise with her determination.

She faced rejections from multiple airlines, but got her big break when she was accepted into Tigerair in 2010.

Capt Khaw credits female role models – including Capt Vanessa Ess, the first woman to make it into SilkAir’s cadet pilot programme in 2001 – who showed that it was “actually possible” for women to become pilots, inspiring her to keep going.

On March 8, to commemorate International Women’s Day, Capt Khaw operated a flight from Singapore to Chiang Mai where all the key personnel – from the duty terminal managers, Immigration and Checkpoints Authority officers and security personnel to the pilots and cabin crew – were women.

As she typically operates turnaround flights within the region, Capt Khaw can return home every day to spend time with her two daughters, aged seven and nine, who also want to be pilots. Her husband is also a Scoot pilot.

Recounting meaningful flight encounters, she said some passengers were pleasantly surprised to see a female captain in command, and even asked to meet her after the flight to thank her for the safe flight and take photos with her.

She hopes to advance to operating wide-body aircraft, such as the Boeing 787s, that can fly farther.

Another female pilot is Jetstar Asia senior first officer (SFO) Lim Wen Shan, 45, a former military pilot with the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) who crossed over to the world of commercial flying in 2019.

She now flies the Airbus A320 at Jetstar Asia.

In the RSAF for 14 years, she flew the C-130 transport aircraft, which can carry soldiers, military equipment and other supplies.

But the younger retirement age of 50 for air force pilots prompted her to make a “natural career transition” to becoming a commercial pilot, as she wanted to continue flying for longer. The retirement age for commercial pilots is 65.

Noting that this career transition is common among air force pilots, SFO Lim said she had to convert her military pilot licence to a commercial one, and completed the flight tests for this in America over one year on her own time while she was still in the air force.

SFO Lim had funded the licence conversion – costing around $60,000 – herself, adding that it was “quite expensive” but cheaper than starting from scratch as a cadet.

Learning how to fly is costly for anyone who is not sponsored by the air force or an airline’s cadet programme, she noted.

Singapore’s limited airspace also means that there are not many access points for people to learn to fly, so people may have to go abroad to take lessons.

To add to these challenges, it is uncommon to see a female pilot, making it even more daunting for younger girls who want to pursue a career in aviation, said SFO Lim.

She had to embark on her aviation career with the air force, as back in 2005, there were no pilot openings at budget airlines and SIA did not hire female cadet pilots. SIA started accepting female cadet pilots in 2016.

But SFO Lim noted that she has observed more female pilots in batches after hers in the RSAF, adding that more women may be encouraged to join the aviation sector since information on flying careers is now more accessible due to social media and public outreach campaigns.

In December 2024, nearly 20 years after getting her wings, SFO Lim was able to take her mother on a flight she operated – to Wuxi, a city in eastern China.

It was something she could never do as an RSAF pilot, SFO Lim mused, adding that she feels blessed to now be able to invite her mother aboard her flights and explore other cities with her.

“(My mother) was quite stunned and surprised at first when I invited her to the cockpit, and she even asked if she could come in to take a picture.”

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.