My first blog in a series during which I will share my own experience as an airline pilot, how the pandemic has changed things and how I am trying to learn new skills to secure my future.
My story
I have been an airline pilot for over 25 years, a job which I thoroughly enjoy every day of my life. The job comes with a lot of dedication and commitment. The regular training and medical checks together with an irregular life style of living in different time zones. Night becomes day and day becomes night! I feel we adapt to this because aviation is our passion. It is always with great honor to walk up to your plane which you are about to command through the skies. In my case it was an A350, an aircraft I totally love. The sleek design and the highly advanced technology, it was everyday mind boggling how an aircraft this size, safely takes us around the world.
The travel certainly brings a long a lot of adventure and we get to see places most people can only dream off. Every trip is a paid holiday which we share with strangers, since we rarely fly with the same crew who become our family for a few days and then we separate, to often never see each other again. Being away from home so much brings along loneliness and we miss a lot of special time with family and loved ones again a commitment that comes with this wonderful job.
As an airline pilot we get trained technically, medically, security, safety, admin to name just a few areas but seldom do we venture out to take up other jobs as time wise and financially there is no opportunity or need. It is even hard to commit to a sports-team as we are seldom available at regular committed times. Often airline pilots retire and all they have ever done is do just that “be an airline pilot” again aviation is a passion and there was never an opportunity in our busy career or need to explore other jobs.
Aviation was a booming industry with airlines growing and startups joining the industry. The industry was striving to become bigger, better and faster with more sophisticated aircraft, better services, more and longer flights. At no stage was there any indication the industry may just crash overnight. But it happened and it left more than 50% of the pilots unemployed with no warning and no time to educate themselves for a new job. For the remaining 50% who are lucky to be employed, the industry has done a 180-degree U-turn.
Aviation met COVID!!!!
In my next blog I will share with you how my life as an airline pilot has changed over the last year . I look forward to hear how you experience the change in your career since the pandemic. By the end of my last blog in this series, I hope to inspire some of you on how we can get through this and belief aviation will be back in all its Glory. Best wishes from 350VA