Adeola Ogunmola: Nigeria’s First Female Pilot To Fly the Boeing 787

Captain Adeola Ogunmola Sowemimo has made history as Nigeria’s first female pilot to fly Boeing 787 for Qatar Airways.

At just 31 years old, Adeola is making her mark. She is the first Nigerian woman to fly the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a modern plane that can reach speeds of Mach 0.85, or about 1,024 kilometres per hour. As a pilot, she safely carries 250 passengers around the world.

Born on October 16, 1990, in Kaduna, Nigeria, she faced challenges like religious conflicts that caused her to change schools several times between Kaduna and Ibadan.

Despite these difficulties, she stayed focused and graduated from First Baptist Model High School in Kaduna in 2007.

After finishing secondary school, Adeola started a pre-degree course at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) in Oyo State. However, her passion for flying led her to enrol at the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology in Zaria, where she trained from 2009 to 2010. She then went to Florida, USA, for more training at Sunrise Aviation Inc.

Once her pilot training was complete, Adeola returned to Nigeria to start her flying career. In 2013, she joined Medview Airlines in Lagos as a First Officer on Boeing 737 planes. Her skills quickly earned her a promotion to fly the Boeing 767-300ER.

The biggest moment in her career came in 2018 when she became the first Nigerian woman to pilot the Boeing 787 Dreamliner at Qatar Airways.

Captain Adeola has flown on international flights and started flying the Lagos-to-Abuja route for Qatar Airways in 2020.

She joins other pioneering African female pilots, including Chinyere Kalu, Nigeria’s first female commercial pilot, and Asli Hassan Abade, Somalia’s first female aviator.

Beyond being a successful pilot, Adeola is also a wife and mother. She married Seun Funmi Olamilekan Sowemimo on April 22, 2017, and they have a family together. Balancing her career and home life is challenging, but Adeola has shown that it is possible to excel in both areas.