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Inspector Bhawna Chaudhary is the first woman flight engineer of the Border Security Force (BSF)’s air wing. BSF was established on 1 December 1965, with its air wing tasked to operate in 1969. Inspector Bhawna Chaudhary, along with her four male subordinate officers, was awarded their flying badge by BSF director general Daljit Singh Chawdhary on 10 October.

 

The Border Force has been tasked with operating the aviation unit of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), catering to the operational requirements of all paramilitary forces and special forces, such as the NSG and the NDRF.

 

It was learnt that these five subordinate officers were "trained ab-initio by the instructors of the BSF air wing, and they recently completed their two-month-long training." The personnel were skilled for 130 hours during the two months in-house training starting August, and they also had real exposure to the work as various assets of the BSF air wing flew operational sorties, including during the recent floods in Punjab and other states.

 

 

"The BSF air wing has been facing a critical shortage of flight engineers in its Mi-17 helicopter fleet. The Indian Air Force (IAF) trained the first batch of 3 subordinate officers, but the second batch of five personnel could not get a training slot there due to various constraints," an official said, adding that following this, the BSF then approached the MHA to allow it to conduct an in-house training for preparing flight engineers for its air wing.

 

Inspector Chaudhary is the first woman flight engineer of the BSF air wing, he said.

 

BSF’s air wing unit operates a fixed-wing Embraer jet for VIP duties apart from helicopters such as Mi-17 1V, Mi-17 V5, Cheetah, and ALH Dhruv.

 

“BSF Air Wing successfully conducted in house ab-initio training of Flight Engineers. Five trainee Flight Engineers including one Mahila SO, were awarded flying brevets by DG BSF during the Valedictory Function conducted at New Delhi,” wrote BSF in its post on X.

 

BSF is primarily tasked to guard the Indian borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh, apart from rendering a variety of duties in the internal security domain of the country.