Queen Suthida of Thailand sits in the cockpit of a Royal Thai Air Force JAS 39 Gripen fighter jet before her flight. Both Queen Suthida and Thai Royal Noble Consort Sineenat Bilaskalayani are qualified pilots. (Royal Thai Government)
Thai Queen Is First Queen in the World to Fly a Fighter Jet
Queen Suthida of Thailand, the wife of reigning King Vajiralongkorn since 2019, is a former flight attendant and military officer with a passion for flying.
Suthida Bajrasudha Bimalalakshana isn’t as famous around the world as Queen Camilla of the United Kingdom. Still, she arguably has a far more impressive CV—as a former flight attendant, an officer in the Royal Thai Armed Forces, a member of the King of Thailand’s bodyguard, later its commander, and, since May 2019, the Queen of Thailand.
Queen Suthida currently holds the ranks of general, admiral, and air chief marshal—but unlike Queen Camilla, who is an honorary vice-admiral of the Royal Navy, a colonel of the Grenadier Guards, and colonel-in-chief of several other British Army units, the Thai queen does more than just take part in ceremonial duties while wearing a fancy uniform. She is a qualified pilot with a passion for flying, and has accumulated more than 1,100 flight hours.
On Thursday, Queen Suthida, the fourth wife of King Vajiralongkorn (Rama X), became the world’s first female monarch to be a trained fighter pilot. She also became the first woman in the Southeast Asian nation certified on the multirole aircraft.
The queen made a solo flight, lasting 41 minutes, in a Royal Thai Air Force single-seat JAS 39C Gripen.
When the queen landed, the king presented her with a bouquet and attached a Golden Gripen Order Patch on her left sleeve.
There Have Been Many “Warrior Queens” Throughout History
History is replete with “warrior queens” who led their country into battle.
During the second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, Artemisia I of Caria, the queen of Halicarnassus in southwestern modern-day Turkey, captained her own fighting ship and commanded five others as an ally of Persian emperor Xerxes I. Her bravery in the Battle of Salamis, and the comparatively poor performance of the Persian fleet, allegedly led Xerxes to remark, “My men have become women, and my women men!”
Five centuries later, Boudica, the queen of the Iceni tribe of Celts in Britain, led a bloody uprising against the Roman Empire, killing roughly 70,000 Romans and Roman-allied Britons before her defeat and probable suicide.
Rani Lakshmibai, the queen consort of Jhansi in central India, took control of the princely state and led it into rebellion against the British Empire during the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
Even Queen Elizabeth II was trained as a mechanic and driver of military cars, trucks, and ambulances. Queen Suthida is the world’s first female monarch to be a trained fighter pilot.
The 48-year-old monarch had previously flown such aircraft as a Cessna T-41, a CT-4E Airtrainer, a Pilatus PC-9, a Mooney M-20M, a Piper PA-34 Seneca, as well as multiple Boeing 737s. She spent more than four weeks at an air base in southern Thailand learning to fly the Gripen.
“From mid-August to early October, Queen Suthida made multiple private visits to Wing 7—the principal operating base for Thailand’s Gripen 39C/D fleet—to train on the L-39 advanced jet trainer as part of the Gripen Fighter Flight-Training Programme,” Royal News reported.
She logged 10.13 hours in the two-seat JAS 39D Gripen trainer before her solo flight on Thursday.
The JAS 39 Gripen’s Specifications
- Year Introduced: 1996 (A); 2019 (E)
- Number Built: ~300
- Length: 14.9 m (48 ft 11 in) JAS 39C/E / 15.6 m (51 ft) JAS 39D/F
- Wingspan: ~8.4 m (27 ft 6 in)
- Weight (MTOW): 14,000 kg (30,865 lb)
- Engines: One GE F414G afterburning turbofan (E/F variants)
- Top Speed: 2,100 km/h (1,300 mph) / Mach 2
- Range: 800 km (500 mi, 430 nmi)
- Service Ceiling: 15,240 m (50,000 ft)
- Loadout: 27 mm Mauser BK-27 cannon (omitted on the two-seat variants), including air-to-air missiles such as the AIM-9 Sidewinder, air-to-ground missiles such as the AGM-65 Maverick, and anti-ship missiles such as the RBS-15
- Aircrew: 1–2, depending on variant
Saab’s JAS 39 Gripen first entered service with the Swedish Air Force in 1996, and the current C/D models were adopted in 2008.
The Royal Thai Air Force bought its first Gripens in 2011. Still, the aircraft has seen little actual combat; it was only last year during the border flare-up between Thailand and Cambodia that any JAS 39 was employed in “hot” military operations. RTAF Gripens and F-16 Fighting Falcons bombed Cambodian military targets near the contested border.
The capabilities of the Gripen had already impressed Bangkok, as the RTAF announced in 2024 that it had selected the JAS 39 Gripen E/F to replace its aging fleet of F-16A/B Fighting Falcons following a 10-month evaluation process. During the testing period, the Saab fighter outperformed the newer Lockheed Martin-built F-16 Block 70/72 fighters, among other foreign offerings. There are currently 11 Gripen C/D fighters in service, as one of the original dozen was lost in a January 2017 crash.
Thailand’s Royal Noble Consort Is Also a Pilot
Queen Suthida is not the only trained female pilot with close ties to the Thai ruler. Thai Royal Noble Consort, Sineenat Bilaskalayani, is also a former army nurse and major general in the Royal Thai Army, and holds a pilot’s license, although she is not a military aviator. She was appointed as the first official royal noble consort in Thailand since 1932, breaking nearly a century of tradition.
Bilaskalayani was subsequently stripped of all ranks, titles, and military medals on October 21, 2019, for alleged disloyalty and trying to undermine Queen Suthida. Less than a year later, however, she was fully pardoned, exonerated, and reinstated to all her previous positions and titles. (Discussion of these issues is taboo in Thailand, which has among the world’s strictest laws prohibiting criticism of the monarchy and related institutions.)
Many kingdoms throughout history have featured queens and consorts scheming against each other for the king’s loyalty. Thailand is probably unique in that these two women could settle a future dispute in the sky!
About the Author: Peter Suciu
Peter Suciu has contributed to dozens of newspapers, magazines, and websites over a 30-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a contributing writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. He is based in Michigan. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author at Editor@nationalinterest.org.
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