Squadron Leader Priya Sharma has etched her name into Indian Air Force history. In August 2025, she flew in formation with Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh during the farewell sortie of the MiG-21 at Nal Air Force Station, Bikaner.
For Sharma, this was more than a symbolic flight. Commissioned in December 2018 as the IAF’s seventh woman fighter pilot, she had once dreamt of flying the MiG-21. That dream came full circle as she shared the skies with the Air Chief during the jet’s final chapter.
A B.Tech graduate from IIIT-Kota and trained at the Air Force Academy in Dundigal, Sharma represents a new era of IAF leadership. Her journey is also deeply personal — inspired by her father, an Air Force veteran, she chose to serve in the same skies he once flew.
The MiG-21, India’s longest-serving fighter jet, will be formally de-inducted in September 2025. But as it bows out, Sharma’s role in its farewell underlines the future: women fighter pilots no longer breaking into history, but making it.
