Nezihe Viranyalı

Nezihe Viranyalı (1925 – 22 December 2004) was one of the first Turkish female aviators. She was trained by Sabiha Gökçen, Turkey's first female pilot.

Biography Born in Vidin, Bulgaria of Turkish descent, she immigrated to Turkey as she was impressed by the Turkish female pilot Sabiha Gökçen's flight tour around the Balkan countries and the air show at Sofia in 1938. At the age of sixteen, she enrolled at the flight school Türkkușu (literally Turkishbird) of the Turkish Aeronautical Association, where Sabiha Gökçen was a trainer. Nezihe Viranyalı learned skydiving first, and later obtained her pilot license for gliders and airplanes. She was the last of the four female aviators trained by Sabiha Gökçen, the others being Edibe Subaşı, Yıldız Uçman, and Sahavet Karapas. She herself trained hundreds of aviators at the Türkkușu Flight School.

In 1955, she took part as a skydiver at the international air shows held in the Netherlands and Germany. Invited by the American pilot Jacqueline Cochran, she went to the United States to attend a course on civil aviation at the University of Tennessee on a scholarship.

Stuart Kline's exhaustive work Türk Havacılık Kronolojisi / A Chronicle of Turkish Aviation mentions her with pictures.

Private life In the 1940s, she was one of the few women in Ankara to own an automobile. She enjoyed ice skating and playing the accordion. Besides Bulgarian and Russian, she was also fluent in English and German.

Honors In 2004, she was honored with the award "The Successful Turkish Woman" by the newspaper Dünya Gazetesi.