Steadily rising through the ranks, Aya Gertrude Konan is now the first female commercial pilot in Cote d’Ivoire. The Ivorian’s passion for aviation was stoked at a young age, she told Afrique Magazine.
“I must have been eight years old. At the beginning of the school year, on the form we filled out, I wrote that I wanted to become an airplane pilot,” she recalled. “This was the first time I had expressed this so clearly. The master called me and said: ‘You have a very big dream. If you stick with it and work hard, you’ll get there.'”
Konan maintained her childhood aspiration of becoming a pilot even after starting her work in the aviation sector in April 2013 as a flight attendant. Learning to fly was expensive but she did not give up.
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She took advantage of an opening that presented itself in late 2014 when Air Côte d’Ivoire announced a competition to train and hire young Ivorians for positions in aviation, such as pilots and aircraft mechanics.
Konan was one of 15 people chosen from roughly 1500 candidates after a rigorous recruitment procedure that included file analysis, psycho-technical testing, and assessments in disciplines such as mathematics, physics, and English. According to Rising Africa, she was the only female candidate chosen.
She studied theoretically at the National Polytechnic Institute Houphouët Boigny (INPHB) in Cote d’Ivoire. She then pursued practical training in France, fully committing herself to gaining the proficiency necessary to fly.
Konan became the first female civilian airline pilot trained by the State of Côte d’Ivoire after completing two years and four months of rigorous training from 2015 to 2017, marking a significant milestone in her career.
Konan’s legacy as a trailblazer in her industry was cemented when she obtained qualification as a Bombardier Dash Q400. At the moment, she pilots the Airbus A320 as a first officer with Air Côte d’Ivoire.
The 35-year-old recently expressed the freedom and awe she finds while flying an airplane. She told Afrique Magazine, “When I fly, there is only the sky and me. It’s a wonder, a freedom. It’s inexplicable. You take off this wide-body aircraft, with more than a hundred passengers on board… You have the weight of this responsibility, but you say to yourself: ‘I am alongside the clouds’, ‘I am in the skies’.”
