It is a long way from St Mary's College in Apia to New Mexico in the United States, where one Samoan currently works with Virgin Galactic, an American spaceflight firm.

Meet Feleni Seloti, who hails from Satuiatua and Nofoalii and currently works as an NDT Level 2 Technician at Virgin Galactic. She is currently on holiday in Samoa to reconnect with family. Her visit to the islands marked her first vacation since joining the U.S. company in November 2018 with her last homecoming in 2016. 

Virgin Galactic is an American spaceflight company that was founded by British billionaire Sir Richard Branson and is currently doing pioneering work in space tourism using a rocket-powered space plane.  

In an interview with the Samoa Observer last Friday, Ms. Seloti recalled her early years in Samoa, growing up as the daughter of a Methodist Church pastor, the late Rev. Seloti Alainuuese of Satuiatua and her late mother, Tusiesea Seloti Alainuuese of Nofoalii. She attended her primary school in Samoa before ending up at St Mary’s College at Vaimoso, which is an educational institution that she holds dear to her heart, due to the impact that the Catholic nuns had on her education. In 1988 her father was posted by the church to Hawaii and as the youngest of her eight siblings, she was chosen by her parents to accompany them. 

The early years in Hawaii

But life wasn’t easy for the family upon their arrival in Hawaii, recalls Ms. Seloti, and being 21 when they moved she had to look for a job to make ends meet and got a stint at the 711 convenience shop. A couple of months later she secured a job doing accounting for a local airline company, where she worked for seven years. It was while working for the airline company that she was asked if she was interested in becoming a pilot. But she didn’t have enough money to pay for commercial pilot training, but a good Samaritan stepped forward to assist and it wasn’t long before she got enrolled to train to become a pilot and completed the course. 

“I got my private license then I went to the multi-engine and after that, I became a CFI, which is a certified flight instructor and then from there, I ended up in a commercial flight so I got the commercial license and that's how I became a commercial pilot,” said Ms. Seloti. “And I got my citizenship at that time and so you know, I got so much opportunity now since I become a U.S. citizen. 

“And then I ended up, I was flying with Aloha Island Air, just to get some hours, you know, discipline as a pilot so I did, and I flew for them for a couple of years until 2006.”

A car crash changed the course

In 2006 Ms. Seloti had a car crash that changed the course of her career as it cut short her flying. But when one door closed, another one opened, and she got recruited by America’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and became a permanent employee after the 9/11 terror attacks in the U.S. 

By the time she joined the FAA, she had already clocked 24 years of working in America’s aviation industry and it was probably the right time for a change in the scenery, in terms of employment prospects.

In 2018 she applied and got accepted to do training at an aerospace company, Aerospace Technology Academy in California. Her training ran from July 2018 and she graduated in September of that year and went on to secure an internship with a spaceship company that was affiliated with Virgin Galactic. In November 2018 she joined her current employer and in February 2019 she got hired as a direct employee.

Currently, her position with Virgin Galactic is as an NDT Level 2 Technician, which entails responsibility for the inspection of space flight systems hardware, assemblies and vehicles. NDT stands for “non-destructive testing”, which is a process of inspecting, testing and assessing materials for differences in characteristics without destroying a part or a system. 

A technician with Virgin Galactic

Ms. Seloti told the Samoa Observer that her job – as a Senior Specialist Inspector – entails a lot of inspection to provide certification for the crafts that Virgin Galactic uses as part of its pioneering work in space flights. 

“I just got a promotion also, senior specialist inspector, which, you know, a lot of the inspection that they do, or I can verify some of the inspection from our other inspector. 

“They always need a second set of eyes, so that way because we're under the FAA we have our stamp on it.

According to Ms. Seloti, Virgin Galactic has already done three commercial spaceflights since May this year with the third one just like last Friday 8 September (Saturday 9 September Samoa Time), which had three private astronauts on board.

She said their crafts, such as the company’s VSS Unity spaceplane last week, took off attached to the VMS Eve mothership aircraft from the spaceport in New Mexico. The craft then got separated from the aircraft when it got to space, before gliding back to a runway landing after the space mission.

“This one is tomorrow [last Saturday], the third one is tomorrow, so they just sent me a link so I can watch it from over here,” she said. “But I think this one is not going to be public because I think is for some of our employees who are going to go up there for astronauts to become astronaut pilots.”

Virgin Galactic currently has about 2,500 employees with offices in the United Kingdom, New York, California and New Mexico where Ms. Seloti is based. She added that there are plans to open a manufacturing and production facility in Arizona. 

Overcoming industry biases

As it stands, she is the only Samoan working for the American firm and probably the only employee with Pacific Island heritage. Asked where she sees herself in the future, Ms. Seloti said she is giving herself another 10 years with Virgin Galactic before she retires while pointing out that she turns 56 in November this year. 

Asked if it is possible for the next generation of young Samoan girls to scale similar heights in the future, the Virgin Galactic worker is confident it is possible, as when she first started only 1 per cent in the U.S. aerospace industry were women.

“So I'll just give an example first because it's something when I got into the aerospace industry, it was only 1 per cent of women. 

“And so the aerospace industry so from right now 2018 and then now on, we got about 11 per cent to 13 per cent number of women, that's including national pilots engineer, as the inspector, technician, production, manufacturing people.”

Having many years of experience working in the global aviation sector, the 55-year-old believes women today are just as good as men when it comes to taking on multiple professional careers.

“Women are always capable of everything and I think that will be my challenge to all the ladies and the girls who want to be the ones to walk into the airline industry, and also the aerospace industry. 

“If any men put you down, the only thing I'm going to tell you. You can do they can do it. We can do it. We women, ladies, we can do it. 

“In America, they always think that all this kind of jobs is always for men. I will tell you because when I walked into the cockpit, ready to fly, the captain turned around to me and he goes, ‘Can you fly’? I didn't answer. I turned around and said [to him] ‘Can you?”

Ms. Seloti said she remains in debt to her parents for her upbringing in Samoa and later in Hawaii when she made her first breakthrough into the aviation industry as a commercial pilot as well as to God for the blessings that have enabled her to prosper in her career, which culminated with her job today as a spacecraft senior inspector.

She returns to the U.S. this weekend after close to two weeks of meeting and reconnecting with aiga (family) on both Upolu and Savai'i.