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