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58 | FireFlyz
Usual talk of pilots and airplane captains would likely be within a construct utilising
exclusivelymale gender pronouns. When it comes to Captain Sofia Sani, though, that is
not the case. The very first female Captainwith Firefly Airlines regales
Jamilah Lim
with
an exclusive interviewabout her career and her thoughts on the airline industry.
Impromptu
While in college, she found out about
flying school and enrolled there as well,
on top of gaining experience working as
a front-line service staff. This certainly
helped to boost her communications
and service skills, skills that she would
bring with her for her years to come. Ad-
ditionally, she grappled and learnt how
to carve out a decent work-life balance
through prioritisation, a skill essential
to flying due to the unexpected nature
of piloting aircraft.
Post college, she continued with flying
school and signed on with Firefly Airlines
in 2008 – Sofia regrets nothing and has
never looked back since.
On Piloting
As like her peers in other airlines, Captain
Sofia reports directly to the Flight Opera-
Pilot, Captain and Lady:
An Interview with Captain Sof ia Sani
S
ofia
is not your average
pilot.
Born in Kuala Lum-
pur, Sofia hails from a
large, multi-racial fam-
ily of nine; she has six
siblings, and a Chinese
father and a Malay mother. Sofia spent
her formative years in Sekolah Rendah
Kebangsaan Kampung Tunku and the
Sri Aman Girls School in Petaling Jaya,
and, in what some may deem an uncon-
ventional route to piloting, the spunky
Kuala Lumpur native went through
the local university system for a grand
total of eight days before she decided
Landscaping was not her groove. She
thusly said goodbye and went on her
merry way to enrol in KDU College to do
Mass Communications.
tions department. In the aviation practice,
pilots and cabin crew generally report to
the Operation Control Centre (OCC) to
gather flight details before proceeding to
the aircraft. Information such as which
aircraft to fly, the destination, aircraft
loads and other salient details would
be predetermined by Firefly’s respective
departments.
A ‘typical day in her shoes’ can be
quite the misnomer – pilots such as
Sofia never really have ‘typical’ days;
their working hours are not fixed, and
depends heavily on the time of the
flights. This may, however, afford her
some semblance of flexibility with her
timing, as she can tend to her personal
commitments such as baking, going
to the gym or doing groceries during
non-office hours.