Flight to Success

away good evening

namaskar to all of you my name is

captain zoey agarwal

and i’m a commander on the boeing triple

sevens

with our bhajava a flak carrier

i’m proud to be a part of air india

and i’m so glad to be amongst all you

young future captains ceos

business leaders prime ministers

presidents

astronauts the world’s your oyster i’m

so happy to inspire

each and every single one of you so

today i’m here to tell a story do you

want to know

whose story is this any guesses

it’s about an eight-year-old girl

take a guess what’s her name

yes it’s about an eight-year-old girl

named zoya who used to sit on top of her

terrace

and she used to look up on the sky

dreaming that glitzy dream of hers

where she used to spot the tiny jumbo

jets

amongst those starry constellations

when she would just spend hours with

doe-eyed eyeballs tracing the

condensation trails

of those jumbo jets which have taken off

from indira gandhi international airport

i used to stay in a tiny village on the

outskirts of delhi

where i would envision this dream

sitting on top of the terrace

and i would wonder to myself could this

tiny eight-year-old zoya

ever fly one of those beautiful flying

objects

well the dream was strong but what was

stronger

was the fact the very constant echo

of the word impossible which

drowned out the jet engines noise in my

ears

zoya it’s impossible where you coming

from

don’t even think about it but you know

what was even stronger

the choice of the inner voice that zoya

had

zoya impossible just read it the other

way

it’s i impossible there is nothing in

this world which is impossible

right now you can see this zoya who’s

sitting in

the flight deck of a boeing triple seven

300 er so truly

right but that eight-year-old zoya did

not know where she’s going to reach back

in those days

right so coming forward from that story

i am possible from there

i come from a background where my

parents did not

believe my ability or my dream to become

a pilot

to take on as an aviator anyways

because from the background i was in i

was taught

to walk in the shadow of my elders and

the men of my family

i’m talking about the 90s while i was

growing up

so coming from there to come to a

platform where i was dreaming to become

a pilot was an

absolute taboo an absolute no-no

however the very same voice of the

eight-year-old zoya

kept on telling her zoya go go you can

do it

do not bow down do not give in go

and from there i went and i enrolled

into saint stephen’s college

i was always academically inclined

so my parents when they saw

me doing two-sided studies from six

a.m in the morning till 3 30 pm i would

go and do my college studies i was

pursuing

a science degree from there and from 3

30

i would take a bus to the other side of

the city and go

and pursue my aviation studies

come back home by 9 30 pm just in time

for the electricity to flicker out

i would spend hours under the street

lights

just outside my house to be able to

complete my assignments

because i had no leverage

to carry forward my assignments the next

day

i would sleep by 12 a.m get up at 6 a.m

and do

this all over again i think by the end

of it

my parents felt a little sorry for me

you know my dad who was a little

sympathetic towards me

told me jaa

because he finally realized the amount

of hard work that i put in

i deserved for that to have my

flying dream to give it a shot at least

30 years from then from the time that

eight-year-old zoya

stood up and sat on the terrace

looking at the starry constellation

gleaming dreaming gazing staring at them

to this zoya of today who has flown

commanded a boeing triple seven 300 er

a 352 000 kilograms airplane

and that too amongst the starry

constellation

beneath the aurora borealis who knows

about aurora borealis here

okay so northern lights great over the

north pole

it’s been 30 years and today i have

flown an airplane

little did that eight-year-old zoya

think back in the days

in 90s that this zoya would do

the unbeatable and create a world

history today

so my friends all my students my

youngsters out there

there is nothing truly which is

impossible as a pilot

i am trained to process

a lot of information from various means

from my crew members from my instruments

from my company

and come to a successful tangible

and an absolutely correct decision

because in this profession unlike other

professions

i don’t have the luxury of going wrong

because not only for a mistake you pay

with your life but you’re also dealing

with the lives of

3 500 passengers behind ask me how 3500

any guesses is there any plane which can

fit 3 500

no right so 350

and for every single passenger you have

at least

10 lives associated with them which

makes it 3 500 people

you’re carrying that responsibility on

your shoulders

which makes it even more amazingly

special because you want to be true to

your job

at every single time i’ll speak about

one of the incidents which uh

the honorable principal actually spoke

about earlier

in 2015 i took off from delhi

for new york jfk i was a commander and

it was really really bad weather

lightning

thunderstorm the works out of delhi

after taking off

one hour into the flight i come to know

about

a sick passenger and i had two choices

the first choice was i can just continue

the flight

second choice was my company will lose

almost half a million dollars

half a million dollars is like a lot of

money right

if you converted into indian rupees

because

i had to take out a lot of massive

amount of fuel

to go back to delhi and

the zoya inside of me not the captain

zoya the zoya inside of me

saw that sick lady as a mother

as a sister as a wife as a daughter

as a human being and we all know that

the life

the cost of life is inequitable to

anything

it’s absolutely above every single thing

so i decided to turn back i had no

second to waste i quickly turned back

my behemoth of a triple seven back to

delhi

180 degrees i negotiated with air

traffic controllers

since i was flying over pakistan at that

point in time

to be able to jettison the fuel now

jettisoning is a little technical term

jettisoning means

when you take out the fuel out of the

airplane i was carrying

fuel to operate from delhi to the other

side of the globe

new york jfk and i had to take out

almost an olympic sized pool

fuel out of my airplane before coming in

and landing

into delhi because delhi had extremely

terrible weather

and i did not have the leverage to take

out fuel

close to delhi as it had lightning we

all know the formula for lightning

plus fuel right the very fact that i

stand in front of you to tell the story

is

that we survived and of course we were

able to negotiate with

pakistani air traffic controllers to

take out the fuel in their space

having said that coming into delhi again

due to bad weather a lot of variations

were there runway changes we finally

landed and got that passenger the

medical attention she needed

post that another challenge awaited i

had to convince

my crew all of them to continue their

working day

16 hours more than what they already put

in by then

to go take off for new york as if we

were to cancel the flight it would have

entailed more financial loss for my

company

which i did not want and

guess what the power of positivity the

willpower

what you want to really do you will do

it

we did it we tried taking off for new

york again

another challenge well life is full of

challenges isn’t it that’s what makes it

exciting

so i was faced with another challenge

which was now

the all the fuel that i took out of my

airplane

now i had to i was falling short of 1

000 kilograms of fuel

i have always learned about this phrase

heard about this phrase you guys have to

thinking out of the box

right please raise your hands who all

have heard that

everybody now how many times in this

life we do get an opportunity to think

out of the box

mostly we just hear it but i would say

very rarely would you actually get an

opportunity to say

i have truly thought of the box thought

out of the box today

which is what i did on that particular

flight we did something very interesting

we started the engines off a gigantic

boeing triple seven three hundred er

who has seen the boeing triple seven

three hundred er

it’s a huge bird has somebody spotted it

no okay we’ll just show you the image of

a boeing triple seven 300 er

so we were standing next to the runway

and

over there we started our engines we

took off for new york

jfk we landed in new york and we

discovered that the passengers survived

we were so grateful to the almighty that

the passengers survived and everything

went successfully

right

not working

so coming back to my story

if i were to tell my flying stories i

think i can spend easily the next 10

days and i’m a woman

i’m a girl so i can talk do not

underestimate me

so i will cut short my experiences

because 17 years of airline experience

it’s quite a lot coming back

i was his eight-year-old zoya who

despite of all the challenges did not

give up

30 years it took me to accomplish my

dream

[Music]

this journey was long and an arduous one

but the one which was powered by hope

self-belief determination fortitude

zeal zest persistence

perseverance hard work i can go on and

on with the adjectives

i am here on a platform to tell my

journey

because i feel it is so easy in life to

give up

when your environment is not conducive

to your thoughts and ideas

i personally had to fight a lot with

every single person

around me my my entire family

my entire environment so as to be able

to achieve my dreams

because this society that i grew up in

even till today does not see women in

leadership roles

let alone an airline commander so i want

to be able to

inspire every single person out there

a little girl a woman a youth

every single child out here every single

person who’s watching this on a global

platform

that if this zoya who was an

eight-year-old

can from dreaming on top of a terrace

cross the north pole command the boeing

triple 7 300 er be the first one to do

so in the world

that is the power of dream that is the

power of achieving the goal

if i can do it so can you

if i can change one life out here

i think this is my purpose of life is

done

[Applause]

remember every single great

reality today tomorrow

whichever was whichever is going to be

it all starts with

one thing which is a dream and that

dream

begins with a dreamer and that dreamer

is

all of you guys out here so do not lose

hope

do not give in do not

give up replace one word give all

to that power of achieving the goal

of achieving that dream and you will do

it

you are cleared for takeoff

against the wind namaskar

jain