THE ONE-WOMAN SHOW
I was the first girl to operate a Flying training school in Sri Lanka — by default - when the entire project just dropped on my lap, with just a sketchy job description! At the time I was working as a Flight Attendant at Air Lanka while also working towards my flying licence at Upali Aviation Ratmalana.
One day, my Instructor Capt Chira Fernando phoned me to say that he has plans to start another new flying school — his third start-up at the Ratmalana airfield. He had already helped to start the first private FTA “Air Taxis” at Maharaja Organization in 1980. That was after the old Air Academy that rocked the 1950s, 60s and 70s closed down in 1979. He then started Upali Aviation which trained many students in the 1980s.
Capt Chira began his third FTA in a very small hangar and a Spitfire U2 Ultralight based at the RML airfield . The business belonged to Mr Nela Sagadevan who sold it to Mr Keerthi Hemachandra- a businessman — who ultimately sold it to Capt Chira.
I began work as Manager of the new FTA in 1987, but the business took a while to take off until I figured out how to teach, manage finances and basically master the art of being a jack of all trades. I had very limited skills in everything other than the ability to serve tea, coffee and juice inside an aluminium tube. Yes, I could balance a tray of juices through any of those unexpected clear air turbulences — putting an acrobat to shame !
The FTA began in a low-key tone, and was primitive to say the least! Capt Chira bought an old dilapidated house by the airfield and I manged to convert a section of it into an Office-cum-classroom. The U2 Spitfire was totally unsuited for proper flying training. Thus, we hired the Cessna 152 from Upali Aviation, and then went on to buy our own Piper PA28 from the Dubai Flying Club, which we ferried to Sri Lanka in 1987. [Check link below for that story] Our hangar went on to become famous as the “U2 hangar”
https://medium.com/@AviadoraDeCeilan/migs-over-telem-917c7a370b22
Our FTA never placed paid advertisements in any print or electronic media during the entire period of its existence albeit a 10cm x 1cm reference in the old Yellow pages of Sri Lanka. Instead, we used the brilliant old-fashioned word-of-mouth marketing strategy.
Our students were our best salespeople. Over and above that, we Sri Lankans have an exceptional ‘gossip’ gene that has its advantageous aspects. Gossip can be put to ‘good use’ if marketed benignly! Besides, nobody knew the actual name of our FTA — CA Aviation. The FTA was famous as “Capt Chira’s Flying School!”…and the ‘Capt Chira” brand name was a huge advantage in overcoming barriers.
Gradually the student numbers started building — and building. Although we didn’t aim to grow fast the overall growth resulted in a stunning 90% use of the aircraft. I was loaded with most of the work and it was my first taste of management. Most of the flying training was handled by the school’s soft-spoken, deliberate visionary, Capt Chira. Assisting him were Capt Druvi Perera, Capt Kapila Gunaratne and Capt Kishan Dharmaratnam. Our brilliant ex-SLAF engineer Mr Munawar Siddique was always ahead of the game with faster and schedule-driven predictable maintenance cycles on the aircraft.
We operated as a stand-alone entity facing Maharaja Organization and Upali Aviation the two big names in the industry at the time. Taking them head-on in the aviation business was a vigorous effort for a small potato like me.
First thing I did was to strike up an excellent alliance with the DCA. We worked very closely with the authority who were my friends, and unlike today, they were always willing to help us out. They also taught me a lot about building network in the field of aviation.
In my ‘one-woman-show’ business, I had for support, two bench-jockeys — Saman and Sunil. But their abilities were hopelessly limited and I retained them simply for their consistent loyalty. Apart from being inundated with teaching, arranging finances for students, counselling and career guidance, I had to do the weekly fuel trek to the Sapugaskanda refinery and back.
The PA28 was approved for MOGAS operations, provided we obtain the fuel from the source and not from Fuel sheds. Thus, it was a weekly trek in my ramshackle barrel loaded truck, to Sapugaskanda. At the time, I was the only girl who drove a truck to the refinery for fuel thus everybody was immensely helpful and invariably allowed me to jump the queue ahead of the men!
All these tasks were fundamentally ‘On-The-Job-Training’ for me and I continued to cope with one difficulty after another. But what I loathed most was having to attend meetings with authorities. These unproductive gatherings depressed me most, as it wasted a lot of my time.
With our success came the culturally inherent muckraking and other forms of defamation tactics of our competitors. Despite being extra cautious I received on an average, 8–10 profanity and sexist phone calls per day. People stalked me too. I am no coward; but I was very young and this unethical behaviour by our rivals creeped me out.
One day my mentor Dr Ray Wijewardene enlightened me about the situation. “See? You are the only aviatrix in this airfield. Thus, you are a celebrity — even though you choose to ignore it. That is why people stalk you. If you were a “nobody”, nobody will bother about you”
I spent the next nine years flying and managing the school with a renewed zest for aviation. From 1987 onwards we built up the school one step at a time. By 1990 we had a large hangar, an office block and classrooms. There was remarkable camaraderie and cheer at the FTA. We set unprecedented trends that were promptly emulated by others schools. We also introduced ‘team building’ excursions with the graduating PPL and CPL batches, which was not heard of back then.
Our primitive set-up went on to become the most successful flying training Organization in Ratmalana and remained so for ten whole years. We not only produced hundreds of pilots for the airline and General Aviation, but we also revolutionised flying training in Sri Lanka with just ONE aeroplane…and I’m elated to be a part of this most compelling success story in our island’s flying training history.
When General aviation was banned in Sri Lanka, we sold the business in 1997 and migrated to Singapore.
