Yasmeen al-Maimani becomes first female pilot in Saudi commercial airlines

Yasmeen al-Maimani has become the first female pilot in commercial airlines in Saudi Arabia, six years after she obtained her aviation license from the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority.

In an Instagram post on Monday, she expressed her happiness by saying “thank God, I achieved my dream today. Released as First Officer” and publishing a picture of herself in the cockpit.

Al-Maimani had completed 300 hours of flying practice in the United States after getting her qualifications in Jordan, and she exchanged her American license with a Saudi one in 2013, but she told Al Arabiya English in that she “couldn’t find any Saudi or Gulf airliners willing to recruit” because of her gender.

“I knocked many doors for a job, but the refusal is still going on under the pretext that women’s jobs as female captain do not exist,” she added in the 2018 interview.

However, Saudi women have entered the Saudi aviation sector in vari ous departments such as customer service, air traffic control, air transport, termination of travel procedures, and administrative work beginning last year, and now al-Maimani has paved the way for Saudi women to become commercial pilots.

Ten months after she got her pilot license and told Al Arabiya English that she will “soon captain a national airliner,” al-Maimani achieved her goal.