{"id":567990,"date":"2026-07-25T20:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T20:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/567990\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T20:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T20:14:12","slug":"truly-remarkable-achievement-as-mother-daughter-pilot-duo-make-aer-lingus-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/567990\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Truly remarkable achievement’ as mother-daughter pilot duo make Aer Lingus history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sonya Bissett and Lara Danaher made Aer Lingus history this week by being its first mother-daughter duo to fly one of its airplanes<\/p>\n

11:43, 25 Jul 2026Updated 13:31, 25 Jul 2026<\/p>\n

\"Proud<\/p>\n

Proud mum Sonya Bissett and daughter Lara Danaher made history this week when they flew an Aer Lingus plane together<\/p>\n

Aer Lingus history was made this week as mother-daughter duo Sonya Bissett and Lara Danaher flew one of the Irish airline’s planes together.<\/p>\n

It marked the first time in the airline’s history that an Aer Lingus aircraft was flown by a mother-and-daughter team, with Captain Sonya and her daughter, Co-Pilot Lara, sharing the flight deck.<\/p>\n

Praising the duo for the historic achievement, Aer Lingus<\/a> said in a post shared on social media: \u201cA rare and special occurrence this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cCaptain and Co-Pilot were Mother and Daughter. The first time in Aer Lingus history.<\/p>\n

\u201cHuge congratulations to Sonya and Lara on a truly remarkable achievement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sonya, who has been working for Aer Lingus since 1999, called it an \u201cabsolute honour\u201d to have Lara as her First Officer on the EI650\/651 flight and thanked \u201ccrew who made it so special for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Sonya<\/p>\n

Sonya said it was “an absolute honour” to have her daughter Lara serve as her First Officer on the histroic flight<\/p>\n

Sharing a sweet post on her LinkedIn page, Lara, who has been a Cadet Pilot with Aer Lingus since October 2024, also expressed her gratitude to her mother \u201cfor the most special day, I\u2019ll cherish it forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

The flight comes a little over a year after Sonya, who hails from Malahide, congratulated her daughter on her first solo flight last May. \u201cCan\u2019t wait to fly with you,\u201d the proud mother commented on Facebook alongside a stream of well-wishes.<\/p>\n

Reactions to their recent flight together under Bissett\u2019s more recent FB and LinkedIn post echo those warm comments.<\/p>\n

One FB user said, \u201cCongrats to Lara. What a wonderful proud Mammy moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another cited, \u201cWhat a dream to come true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many pointed out what a trailblazing moment of pride it must have been.<\/p>\n

Official Aer Lingus social media sites also congratulated the duo for their flight together, with a stream of comments praising the history made.<\/p>\n

\u201cA great story of female power,\u201d one person said, while another dubbed the duo \u201cHistory makers!\u201d and a third person said: \u201cCongratulations Sonya and Lara, wishing you both many more amazing flights together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The growing gender diversity of aviation was one thing noted in these comments.<\/p>\n

Ireland boasts being one of the top five countries with the most female pilots, with a 2021 study showing that 9.9% of Irish pilots are female.<\/p>\n

As this number hopefully continues to grow, we may yet be seeing more heartwarming moments such as these.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest news from the Irish Mirror direct to your inbox: Sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sonya Bissett and Lara Danaher made Aer Lingus history this week by being its first mother-daughter duo to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[601,22708,72,61,60],"class_list":["post-567990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-aer-lingus","tag-aviation","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}