Quick Facts
Biography
Ari Fuji (藤 明里, Fuji Ari, born 1968) is a first woman pilot in command and an instructing pilot at a commercial passenger airline in Japan. She took her aviation license originally in the United States of America and trained to be a certified pilot for commercial passenger airline under Japanese aviation regulations.
Biography
After graduating from Toho Gakuen Girls' High School and Rikkyo University Studies of Law in Tokyo, Japan, Ari Fuji aspired to become an aviator at a commercial airline growing up near Yokota Air Base, United States Air Force in Japan. However, when she applied to the national Civil Aviation College (ja), an Independent Administrative Institution regulated by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, they rejected her request to take the entry examination reasoning she was too short in figure.
She chose to work at a company in Japan, saved enough to study at a pilot training school in the United States of America obtaining aviator's license. After returning home, she started to apply for the aviation certificate while she worked at a company, to be licensed as an aviator under the Japanese aviation reguration.
First officer to a PIC
The former JAL Express (JEX) accepted Fuji as a trainee in 1999, who was licensed as a first officer in 2000, and it was in July 2010 when she became the first woman pilot in command in a Japanese passenger airline. By then, she has accomplished the over 5,500 flight hours regulated by JAL to qualify as a PIC in 11 years.
JAL reformed its recruit system for pilots in the late 1990s and licensed pilots could apply to their recruit program as much as new graduates could. Fuji applied and was admitted as a trainee pilot.
Since around 2005, Ari Fuji concentrated on training toward pilot-in-command (PIC) certification test, which required 3,000 flight hours. In additional 5 years she succeeded at a PIC test on July 2, 2010, at the age of 42 under a stormy weather, and received the PIC certificate as the first woman at a passenger airline in Japan at JAX headquarters in Osaka on July 9, 2010.
A training pilot
With additional flight hours over 600 and maintained outstanding performance at regular PIC sessions, as well as instructor pilot qualification, and in August 2015, certified as a training pilot aged 47, another first record for a woman in aviation industry to open doors for women.
She has been the only woman PIC in Japan as of 2015 and took command on every Doll Festival flights each March 3, when JAL appointed all-women flight operation team including ground staff, mechanics and crews. For Haneda - Komatsu line, JAL flew the first Doll Festival flight on 3 March 2016.