The Airline Captain

Koki Mutungi was six years old when she started proclaiming that she would one day be a pilot. People around her would laugh indulgently at her seemingly childish ambitions, not knowing how serious she was. But immediately after high school at Loreto Convent Msongari, Koki was off to flight training at Wilson Airport. It became apparent how serious she was when she moved to the US at the age of 17 for an intensive non-stop two-year training programme. She accumulated as many flight hours as she could in that period and before her 20th birthday in 1995 she was back in Kenya – a qualified commercial airline pilot.

In 1996 she joined Kenya Airways, the Pride of Africa as their first female pilot on the small Fokker aircraft. The first step – simulator training to make sure that she was quick enough to think through a series of potential dangerous eventualities as a commercial pilot. Kenya Airways pilots would undertake their simulator training in Malaysia, and be trained by ex-military pilots. The training was brutal, with shouting and a boot-camp that would make 50 year old men cry. She wasn’t sure if she would get through it but she did and it was back to Kenya to officially join the crew.

Koki recalls her first commercial flight as a First Officer. As was the norm back then, the door to the cockpit was open. On realising that one of the flight crew was a woman, a male passenger got up and started shouting “You will not make me a guinea pig,” demanding that she not fly the plane. The Captain had to intervene and calm the man down with a warning, demanding that he apologise to his First Officer or he would be removed from the flight. It was a harrowing first day at work. On arrival the same passenger looked into the cockpit and casually remarked “Not too shabby” and disembarked. Thankfully not all days were as dramatic as that first one but it often seemed that for every supportive man in the KQ flight crew there was one who would remind her that she was not the man for the job. No-one told her that her dream job would not be easy.

Being the first female pilot with KQ meant navigating many unchartered waters such as when she found out there was no maternity policy for pilots. The airline almost did not know what to do with her and she ended up sitting out most of her pregnancy. Being a first often means having to define new rules for those who come later. For six years Koki was the only female pilot but today Kenya Airways is the airline with the highest number of female pilots in Africa. In 2014 Koki was promoted to captain on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a first for an African woman and she continues to roam the skies, just like she always said she would.

We congratulate Captain Koki Mutungi for showing that indeed the sky is the limit!