Women have al­ways played an im­por­tant role in Dr Lyn­don Gar­diner's life, even be­fore he be­came chair­man of In­ter­Caribbean Air­ways. He was raised by his moth­er in the Turks and Caicos af­ter his fa­ther aban­doned the fam­i­ly. His sis­ter taught him how to dri­ve. He start­ed an air­line with a sin­gle-en­gine Cess­na in 1991 to vis­it a woman in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic who would lat­er be­come his wife. And on Sun­day, Dr Gar­diner's goal of one day adding Trinidad to in­ter­Caribbean Air­ways' route map was ful­filled with three women op­er­at­ing the in­au­gur­al flight to Port of Spain.

The Em­braer ERJ145, op­er­at­ing as JY752, land­ed at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Sun­day night, mark­ing the start of a four-times-week­ly ser­vice be­tween Trinidad and Bar­ba­dos. In the cock­pit, Cap­tain Lau­rie Chem­i­nade and First Of­fi­cer Xing Zhang and in the cab­in, Tri­na Clarke. Cap­tain Chem­i­nade told Guardian Me­dia that an all-fe­male crew was his­toric in more ways than one. "For many years, there was just me around in Turks and Caicos. Over the last few years, we have start­ed to have more and more fe­males... Not on­ly in the Caribbean, but we can hear them talk­ing on the ra­dio as well," she said. It's al­so about in­spir­ing the next gen­er­a­tion, even if they don't choose avi­a­tion ca­reers. "I have two daugh­ters, and I'm very hap­py that they see that they can do what­ev­er they dream of," Chem­i­nade said.

The de­ci­sion to have an all-fe­male crew for the in­au­gur­al flight was in­ten­tion­al. Ac­cord­ing to Dr. Gar­diner, this move aligned with both the tim­ing of the flight and In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day. Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al, he ex­plained, "When we con­sid­ered the time we were fly­ing, and [that] it was go­ing to be In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day. We made sure to move around the sched­ule to fa­cil­i­tate an all-fe­male crew."