Debra Tran

Debra Tran plans to become the first woman from a Vietnamese background to fly fighter planes for the Royal Australian Air Force.

The foundations for her trailblazing career were laid in 2007 when she qualified as a Bachelor of Applied Science (Civil Aviation) at the University of South Australia – the first Australian-Vietnamese woman to qualify as a pilot. From there, Debra gained a commercial pilot’s licence and instrument rating – and finally joined the RAAF training program in Canberra in February 2009.

Along the way, Debra has chalked up a series of remarkable achievements and is an inspiration to young Australians from Vietnamese families.

She is the youngest of five children and was born in Australia in 1986 to a Vietnamese family who’d migrated to South Australia as refugees four years earlier.

Since she was 16, Debra has been a volunteer teacher of Vietnamese at the Lac-Long and Dac-Lo Vietnamese Ethnic Primary Schools – not only teaching the language but also helping her young students understand their cultural heritage, as well as assimilating to multicultural Australia.

Debra’s class steadily increased from 27 students when she started in 2002 to more than 40.

Following her graduation, Debra worked full-time at a petrol station to pay for her flying fees.

On the weekends, she trained for a black belt at the South Australian Vietnamese Chang-Moo-Kwan Taekwondo Academy and helped out coaching youngsters.

But her burning ambition is to fly fighter planes with the RAAF.

“I have always wanted to play my part in protecting my country’s border and preserving freedom for all Australians,” she says.

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