Women engineers take flight

Metrolife meets three women who broke stereotypes to become aircraft maintenance engineers on the occasion of Women in Engineering Day

Women perform a major role in the airline industry not just as pilots and cabin crew but also as maintenance engineers. Airlines Metrolife spoke to say about 7 per cent of their ground maintenance staff are women.

“Earlier not many women would take up this job. Things have changed in the last 10 years. We now have more women engineers taking on important jobs in the aviation industry. Women bring in a new and innovative wave of thinking,” says the spokesperson of a prominent airline.

‘Many say it’s not a woman’s job’

When Tanushree Mandal, aircraft maintenance engineer, Vistara, began her career, pilots and cabin crew were the most common job profiles for women.

“The role of an aircraft maintenance engineer, though extremely rare for a woman, intrigued me. The intricacies of how an aircraft functions and the avionics behind the machine got me excited,” Tanushree told Metrolife.

With over a decade in the profession, Tanushree has worked on the Airbus 320, Boeing 737, Cessna 152, and the Cessna 172. “Each machine is unique with respect to its communication, navigation, and display,” she explains.

She gained her technical knowledge at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited in Bengaluru. “And there is specialised training for every aircraft,” she observes.

When she started working as a maintenance engineer, many told her it wasn’t a woman’s job. “The key is to think you are qualified for the job and can perform as well or better than anyone else,” says Tanushree.

‘Like working on a human brain’

Palak Arora, avionics engineer, IndiGo, was first exposed to the idea of aircraft maintenance engineering at a career fair. She took up a course in aircraft maintenance engineering in the avionics stream, and qualified for the job over five years.

“Working on an aircraft feels like passing through a maze. One wrong move can extract a high price. We need to stick to every word of the protocols,” she says.

The challenge is often with the physical structure of planes. “There are times when we have to fix errors at places hard to reach. It’s like working on a human brain, one may know the location of a tumor, but is afraid about harming the other nerves in the pathway,” she says. The job calls for a high level of concentration and leaves no room for mistakes, she says.

‘Experience to multiple aircraft helps’

Kumari Sujeeta, duty engineer, AirAsia India, hails from a tiny hamlet in Bihar. “I realised becoming a pilot was not easy for a middle class girl. I had no idea about engineering in the aviation industry. After Class 12, I came to know about an aircraft maintenance engineering course and the most important thing was that it was not very expensive. So it was like a dream come true,” Sujeeta told Metrolife.

Sujeeta first got a licence endorsement for the A320. “All systems are digitally interfaced with each other, so as an avionics engineer, it is not easy to troubleshoot snags on this type of aircraft. But my exposure to multiple aircraft helped me understand it,” she adds.

She feels proving her worth in a male bastion is not easy. “You have to work doubly hard to prove that your skills are just as good or even better than those of your male counterparts,” she says.