NEW DELHI: Flight Lieutenant Mohana Singh has become the first woman fighter pilot to be qualified to undertake missions by day on Hawk advanced jet aircraft. Singh, along with two other women Bhawana Kanth and Avani Chaturvedi.

Singh returned to the ground after a gruelling ‘4 Aircraft combat sortie’ at Air Force station, Kalaikunda, West Bengal, which was the last syllabus sortie, of being fully operational on the Hawks-Jets.

Singh has been trained in flying both Air to Air combat and Air to Ground missions. She has undergone several practice missions which involve firing of rockets, guns and dropping high calibre bombs and also participated in various Air Force Level flying exercises.

She has a total of over 500 hours of incident-free flying of which 380 hours are on the Hawk MK 132 jet.

Flt Lt Mohana Singh will join the first batch of women fighter pilots of the Indian Air force alongside Flt Lt Avani Chaturvedi and Flt Lt Bhawana Kanth.

A week ago, Bhawana Kanth was appointed as the first operational woman pilot to undertake combat missions in India by day on MiG-21 Bison.