to abandon a career in the medical profession and follow her passion. but she initially had her doubts. i thought that this male dominated industry was too hard on females. and most significantly, i am short so i did not know if i could fly a plane or even step on the rudders or most importantly, the brakes. the asia pacific region has seen a boom in air travel for first time flyers and the small pool of qualified pilots isn't meeting demand. in fact, boeing said globally, airlines will need more than 800,000 new pilots in less than 20 years. roughly one third of those jobs will be in asia. aircraft like airbus a320 run on autopilot and normally the trip is fairly smooth but pilots have to learn how to deal with the unexpected, that's why they spend a few hours in the simulator like this to build up confidence to steer themselves out of trouble. major airline manufacturers require 200 hours of flight time but some airlines want to change the rules.