Fay­ola K J Fras­er

At 26 years old, Grena­di­an Kyana Bubb has al­ready man­aged to break bar­ri­ers and im­pact change in her com­mu­ni­ty. A self-pub­lished chil­dren’s book au­thor and one of the youngest fe­male air traf­fic con­trollers in Grena­da, she has fear­less­ly cre­at­ed a path for her­self in many ways where the paths did not be­fore ex­ist. Trav­el­ling has deep­ened her love and re­spect for planes, and in her heart, she be­lieves that “the sky is my home.”

 Bubb was born and raised in St Georges, Grena­da, and at­tend­ed St Georges Pri­ma­ry School and St Joseph’s Con­vent, St Georges. “I al­ways loved planes,” she re­mem­bers. “We grew up trav­el­ling of­ten as a fam­i­ly, and I re­mem­ber my fas­ci­na­tion be­gan ear­ly. By 6 am, my broth­er and I would be out­side wait­ing to see LI­AT, or Caribbean Star, fly over the house.” As her in­ter­est in all things planes grew, she fo­cused on sub­jects in school that would one day lead her to a ca­reer in the avi­a­tion in­dus­try. Af­ter com­plet­ing her As­so­ciate’s De­gree in pure math, ge­og­ra­phy, and physics, Bubb worked as an aero­nau­ti­cal in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer at the Mau­rice Bish­op In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Grena­da. Af­ter per­form­ing ex­cel­lent­ly in this role for less than a year, she got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to get in­volved in air traf­fic con­trol.

When she in­ter­viewed to join the air traf­fic con­trol co­hort, she then “had to make the hard­est move ever, “to leave home where I had nev­er moved from and move to Trinidad for eight months to pur­sue the diplo­ma in air traf­fic con­trol.” In Au­gust 2018, 20-year-old Bubb left Grena­da for Trinidad and, for the first time, was on her own. Re­mem­ber­ing her time in Trinidad, she got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to live and ex­pe­ri­ence so many of the things she had on­ly read about, such as the fes­ti­val of Di­vali and the en­thralling beau­ty of To­ba­go, which she felt mir­rored Grena­da in many ways that Trinidad did not.

As the youngest air traf­fic con­troller in Grena­da (up to 2023), Bubb came from a fam­i­ly of plane lovers. When she was young, her fa­ther worked at the air­port in Grena­da be­fore mov­ing on to work on cruise ships. Her broth­er, al­so an avid plane fa­nat­ic, is pur­su­ing his de­gree in aero­space en­gi­neer­ing. She re­mem­bered ini­tial­ly strik­ing up an in­ter­est in air traf­fic con­trol when she saw air traf­fic con­trol tow­ers in her text­books from sec­ondary school.

Sub­se­quent­ly, her nat­u­ral­ly in­quis­i­tive na­ture while work­ing at the aero­nau­ti­cal in­for­ma­tion ser­vices made her dive deep­er in­to the im­por­tance of the air traf­fic con­trol of­fi­cer. With her train­ing in Trinidad un­der her belt, Bubb re­turned to Grena­da to be­gin her role in air traf­fic con­trol. “I still re­mem­ber my first time speak­ing to an air­craft,” she mus­es. “It was a small air­craft, from Grena­da to Car­ri­a­cou, and I was ter­ri­fied to say the wrong thing to the pi­lot.” As time has giv­en her greater con­fi­dence in her abil­i­ties, she now looks to­wards the fu­ture, sav­ing for pi­lot school, her next step in avi­a­tion.

Grow­ing up in the Caribbean, she has had the ben­e­fit of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the com­mand of many fe­male pi­lots on LI­AT. As a child and teenag­er, she re­mem­bers hear­ing them do their checks and feel­ing du­ly im­pressed, vi­su­al­is­ing her­self in that role one day. Thus, imag­ine her shock when, dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in 2020, she found her­self mind­less­ly scrolling through Twit­ter and saw a tweet from some­one in the US say­ing that they had nev­er seen a woman fly a plane.

Short­ly af­ter, a friend of hers from the Ba­hamas who had just fin­ished flight school de­scribed the way that when she was get­ting on­to a plane, men around her doubt­ed and de­cried her abil­i­ty to fly an air­craft. Bubb, shocked by this se­ries of oc­cur­rences, made a joke to her friends that she was go­ing to write a book, not un­der­stand­ing “why in 2020 we have all these peo­ple doubt­ing women’s abil­i­ties.” 

In Sep­tem­ber 2020, she wrote her first draft of the sto­ry. Then, as many writ­ers do, she let it sit and for­got about it com­plete­ly. The in­spi­ra­tion for her book, “Ad­ven­tures of Xo­la and Sage: Women in Avi­a­tion,” was her be­lief that “life doesn’t come with a man­u­al with what is for men ver­sus what is for women.” It fol­lows two young girls on a quest to find the an­swer to whether women can fly planes too, en­cour­ag­ing young chil­dren to be­lieve that there is no lim­it to what they can achieve.

By De­cem­ber, she felt drawn back to her book and start­ed look­ing up Caribbean il­lus­tra­tors, even­tu­al­ly find­ing one from Car­ri­a­cou who sent her a draft, and she knew im­me­di­ate­ly it would be her cov­er page. The peo­ple in her book were il­lus­trat­ed as peo­ple of colour, hold­ing up a mir­ror for the re­al chil­dren of the Caribbean to be able to see them­selves vivid­ly in the book.

 On March 29, 2021, her de­but self-pub­lished book was re­leased on Ama­zon, and with­in the first two days, Bubb sold over 60 copies. She had an of­fi­cial launch in May 2021 just for chil­dren, hand­ing out cup­cakes and pi­lot badges and let­ting them meet a pi­lot. “My goal in the launch and with the book was to ed­u­cate boys and girls about women in avi­a­tion and more broad­ly, that women can do all the things men do. Boys al­so have to ap­pre­ci­ate and re­spect hav­ing women in the same fields as them.” 

Merg­ing her love for avi­a­tion with im­por­tant ad­vo­ca­cy for women through lit­er­a­ture, Kyana Bubb is lead­ing a cul­ture shift to­wards up­lift­ing and em­pow­er­ing women in tra­di­tion­al­ly male-dom­i­nat­ed fields.