WOMEN have continued to steal the limelight in the previously male dominated professions.                                                         Twenty-year-old Besa Mumba is the latest young lady to have penetrated a male-dominated profession-aviation.
Besa is Zambia’s youngest commercial pilot. She is now six months into her job with Proflight Zambia and has already clocked up 300 flying hours on domestic routes.
She flies to Kasama, Lower Zambezi, and Luangwa.
Besa Mumba joined Proflight Zambia in 2016 after completing her training in Pretoria, South Africa.
She was trained at SIMU Flight School in South Africa.
The 20-year-old is now a fully qualified pilot working full-time with Proflight Zambia, which is a Lusaka based airline.

MUMBA

Besa decided to become a pilot four years ago and notched up over 300 flight hours as a First Officer on the Cessna Caravan aircraft where much of her day is spent.
Besa’s bold decision to fly makes her Zambia youngest commercial pilot and a role model for women across the world.
Proflight Zambia flies from Lusaka to Livingstone, Mfuwe, Lower Zambezi, Ndola, Solwezi, and Kasama; and from Ndola to Solwezi and Kasama.
That decision also cements Proflight Zambia’s position as a champion of training and nurturing young local talent.
Besa was born in December, 1996, in Lusaka in a family of three and is the last born.
She attended Sunshine Primary School in 1999 before she went to St Mary’s Secondary School where she was head girl for the 2011 to 2012 school year.
Later on, she left the country to pursue her career at the South African Flight Training Academy in Heidelberg, Gauteng.
Thereafter, she started her Private Pilot Licence course in April 2013. She began flying the same month.
The flight training course lasted two years.
To get her commercial licence, Besa underwent extra and additional complex training at SIMU Flight in Pretoria.
Through the first quarter of 2015, she did final training towards obtaining a Commercial Pilot’s Licence, which she earned in July of that year at the age of 18.
But what spurred her to have the heart and passion to become a pilot was the curiosity behind flying in the sky.
“Curiosity made me venture into the aviation career. Initially, I wanted to be part of the cabin crew but I thought to myself: ‘why not be the person who flies the aircraft?’
From then I had questions on how planes fly, how they moved in the sky and I wanted to know how pilots knew where they were and where they were going.
My curiosity grew,” she said.
Besa expressed gratitude to her parents for supporting her in her career, as well as Proflight for giving her an opportunity to have a job of her dreams.
She paid tribute to all the pilots at Proflight Zambia as well as those she met in South Africa during her training.
She said she feels very blessed and proud to have had the opportunity to go to flight school to study and become a pilot.
As a first officer, Besa flies alongside the captain of the aircraft on the airline’s Caravan aircraft.
Her ambitions and hard work are also supported by the Proflight team which makes sure that she feels comfortable in her work.
The new Lusaka-Kalabo service begins on March 15, 2017 and Mfuwe-Lower Zambezi between June 15 and October 31, 2017.
The airline also has regional routes to Lilongwe in Malawi, and Durban in South Africa.
Her experience so far shows that the industry is not biased nor favours anyone, be it male or female. Aviation presents equal opportunities for everyone.
“If you have a dream and work hard, you can get to where you want. I feel amazing! I hope the Zambian people will be inspired by my story to also reach for their dreams and goals because I think the sky is not the limit,” she said.
In five years’ time, Besa sees herself becoming a captain and flying the big jets.
She is proud of her country and wants to continue working hard to make Zambia better.
Besa is following in the footsteps of a number of illustrious female flyers, including Zambia’s first female pilot Yichida Ndhlovu, and Major Nina Tapula who was the first female pilot in the Zambian Air Force (ZAF).
Besa has already been to her old high school, St Mary’s, to extol the virtues of being a female pilot in what used to be a man’s world.
“It felt so thrilling to look back where I come from and know how I could make such a big difference by going back, to inspire others to do better as well. I am always humbled to know that I could make a difference in the lives of so many young people,” she said.
She is looking forward to visiting more schools to speak to pupils about what flying a plane as a career really involves.
Besa is mindful of the challenges in her career. But overall, she feels happy and says flying is the path she chose because it is where her passion lies.
“It’s not about gender, nor being male or female – everything is for everyone. We have equal opportunities,” she said.
Her dream is to reach a thousand hours by the end of 2017, something that she said would not only be a great achievement, but also indicate her hard work given that any pilot’s experience is measured by the number of hours flown.
Besa is particularly excited about some of the new routes opening up on Proflight’s timetable.
“I am very happy with the opening of the new routes from Ndola to Solwezi and Kasama.
They indicate growth in the work we do as an airline.
The young pilot looks forward to flying to more places around Africa and beyond as her career progresses.