Priti Kohal’s love of flying began when she was a 16-year-old living in Mumbai. But her passion for planes started sitting in the driving seat on the open road, not wide-open skies.

As a teenager, Kohal, now age 45, would take her parents’ car, unbeknownst to them, for joy rides around town. She loved being in control of the vehicle and the freedom that came with it.

“I just loved the thought of getting away,” she said.

When Kohal turned 18 and officially received her driver’s license, her passion for driving intensified. “It was great to be able to do things on my own without having anyone ferry me around,” she said. “After the car I moved on to faster modes of transportation.”

Kohal earned her pilot’s license in 1994 and since 1996 has been a pilot with India’s Jet Airways — she’s one of 600 female pilots in India — and she’s been a captain since 2009.

There are only 4,000 female pilots worldwide, versus 130,000 male pilots, according to the International Society of Women Airline Pilots. Kohal’s doctor mother and engineer father taught her and her sister that they weren’t any different from men and could do anything they wanted as long as they had fun doing it.

This family support has helped her excel, but many women entering traditionally male-dominated professions in India encounter more obstacles. Kohal says she hasn’t run into sexism, but other females in the airline industry have and continue to face hurdles simply because of their gender. In 2009, Air India fired ten female flight attendants for being overweight. GoAir, a budget airline in India, said in 2013 that it only wanted to hire small, young females to be flight attendants in order to save money on fuel by keeping the weight of the plane down. And there are stories in the media and social media of notes being left on flights, or complaints being made, by passengers upset that they’ve flown with a female pilot.

However, Kohal never thought twice about being in the airline business. “I never considered being a pilot different from being an engineer or a teacher,” she said. “There were no limits for what we could do.”

Short flights, long days

When her children were younger, Kohal only flew one- or two-hour flights. She woke at 03:30, fed her baby, put him back to sleep and then headed off to the airport by 04:00. She’d work her flight and usually be home by 10:30, having the remainder of the day to spend with her children. By sticking with this system and meticulous planning, Kohal said she has never missed an important milestone or a school meeting for her children, now ages 14 and 11.