THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: When President Pratibha Patil goes on her maiden flight in an IAF frontline fighter on Wednesday, at the controls will be a Malayali pilot from Alappuzha.
Wing Commander S Sajan will fly the President on a Sukhoi-30 MK1 - the best frontline fighter in the IAF stable - from the Lohegaon Air Base near Pune on Wednesday morning.
The sortie will last 30 minutes, an IAF spokesperson said.
While Patil, 74, is not the first Indian President to fly in a fighter - A P J Abdul Kalam did it earlier - she will become the first Indian woman to get a chance to do so. (There are women officers in the IAF, but none in the fighter stream.) Sajan, who presently heads the fighter squadron at the air base, was commissioned into the IAF fighter stream in June 1992. A graduate in mathematics from Loyola College, Chennai, Sajan had a passion for flying even before joining the IAF.
"At school in Chennai, he was in the Air Squadron NCC. Sajan's wife Sujatha is a former Air Force pilot," Sajan's father Sivaraman, a retired Malayalam professor, said from Chennai. Sajan holds a private pilot's licence and is a qualified flying instructor and display pilot, according to the Air Force.
Sajan attended school in Kanyakumari and Chennai. As an Air Force Academy cadet, he was awarded the Sword of Honour for standing first in overall performance, and the President's Plaque by then President R Venkataraman for standing first in Order of Merit. Sajan has over 3,200 hours of flying experience.
An alumnus of the Defence Service Command and Staff College of Bangladesh, he holds a first division Masters in Defence Studies from the National University, Dhaka. He has been commended by the Chief of Air Staff and the Air Officer Commanding- in-Chief for his performance as a pilot, Defence sources said.