Grounds crew supervisor Deborah (right, in orange shirt) at work in Lae overseeing the unloading of a patient from the helicopter
Deborah at the scholarship presentation at UniTech with her boss at Manolos Aviation, chief executive officer Jurgen Ruh
off Madang, which she said is like many rural communities in PNG that are cut off from basic services. “It’s a small island and they don’t get health supplies, teachers often won’t go there to teach so the kids don’t have access to education, the people don’t have medication. I wanted to go to flying school because I wanted to be able to fly to places like that with no road access.” She considers now
that it was perhaps unusual for a seven- year-old girl to want to be a pilot but she never felt discouraged. In fact, her father’s late sister Jacqui Naing had already set the bar as a family trailblazer by becoming PNG’s first female jet pilot before she died in 2018. “Everyone was so supportive – they didn’t tell me ‘no’,” Deborah said. “My family, my sisters, my circle of friends. I surrounded myself with people with
Deborah takes a
selfie while learning to fly in Fiji in 2017
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