The RAF has had its first ever female Red Arrows pilot. Kirsty Moor from RAF Scampton has finished her first week of training and done her first display today. She will start being in the Red Arrows team from next year. She is staying with the team until 2012. This will mean that she will only just feature in the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony.
Around forty pilots apply each year and only nine of those are sent to training in Cyprus. Around 60 out of 2,040 train pilots in the RAF are women. It’s the 45th anniversary of the team this year so they do lots of displays. Kirsty said that she had been inspired to join the RAF by her father who was a Tornado navigator in the RAF. She joined in 1998 after studying aeronautical engineering at London’s Imperial College.
She had said that the day she was selected was one of the best days of her life. She has also completed combat missions in Iraq. The RAF said “we do have female aircrew in all our squadrons and this is a great way of getting the message across to women thinking of joining the Red Arrows,”
“She is very calm under pressure but Red Arrow pilots also have to be able to do the job on the ground as well as the flying job and she has a very calm and level-headed approach.”
She will join the other pilots who are based in Lincolnshire next year. She said it was an honour to be chosen. This will be a change for Kirsty as she has been based at RAF Marham in Norfolk before this. We’ll be watching out for her!
No comments:
Post a Comment