Fanny Chollet, the first female fighter pilot of the Swiss Air Force in front of an F/A-18 Hornet combat plane in Payerne in 2019 (archives).
Photo: Keystone/LAURENT GILLIERON
Vaudoise Fanny Chollet finishes her one-year test pilot training with the US Air Force this week. The 33-year-old young woman, who holds the rank of captain in the Air Force, is the first Swiss woman to have sat in the cockpit of an F/A-18.
Fanny Chollet is about to complete her training at the US Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, northeast of Los Angeles. She will soon return to Switzerland to continue her work as a test pilot, we can read on the website of the Federal Armaments Office, armasuisse.
It is difficult for her to say why she was selected for this training in the United States. ‘The fact that someone is selected to become a test pilot in Switzerland doesn’t happen that often,’ she said in an interview published on Sunday on the Blick website.
‘There are nine test pilots at Armasuisse, including six ‘Fixed Wing’ test pilots, and three helicopter test pilots. So it’s really a small team,’ she adds.
Edwards Air Force Base contains a great historical legacy. It was here, in the Mojave Desert, that the sound barrier was first broken by an airplane.
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