Airline Pilots Surviving the Pandemic Part 2

The day COVID hit aviation

This is my second blog in a series where I will share with you how COVID has changed my life as an airline pilot and how the pandemic changed  aviation.

Pilots are taking big pay cuts due to the reduced flights, flying skills are less sharp due to infrequent flying, night stops are lonely due to worldwide quarantine to name just a few changes. Medically life is a daily battle between the stress of the ongoing uncertainty and the need to stay fit for the few duties we need to perform to the same high professional standard.

I will share with you how COVID changed my job as an airline pilot. February 2020 I was a captain flying an Airbus 350 from Hong Kong to North America. I loved my job, I loved the aircraft, I loved the destination I flew to…..life was wonderful. The moment COVID hit travel restrictions  came in, passengers were cancelling flights, country were shutting their boarders. In an unprecedented way airports became ghost towns.

I remember the early stages of HKIA being empty the feeling was airy and uneasy.  I had my routine for close to 15 years and just like that nothing felt familiar anymore. No taxis with passenger, empty check-in counters, restaurants shut down, no passengers and the most emotional part seeing endless rows of aircraft parked up. My job changed along with it, I fly much needed cargo instead of passengers, I moved from an A350 to an A330, my destinations changed based on medical equipment needs and the sight of familiar colleagues was gone. Since we mainly fly belly cargo, we don’t carry the standard set of cabin crew I am so familiar with all these years, and devastating to say many cockpit colleagues lost their jobs.

We all fly a lot less frequent so it is common knowledge that pilots are currently not as sharp anymore, from my own experience this brings extra anxiety as we are off-course worried about making detrimental mistakes in a very unforgiving environment. The lack of currency comes paired with working in a foreign environment, all the things we were familiar with in our day-to-day operation have changed to a large extend as I explained earlier.

Passenger aircraft are designed to carry passengers, flying belly cargo only has a significant effect on the balance of the aircraft. We need to carry extra weight in the back of the aircraft just to keep the aircraft in the safety range of the balance limits.

Today my work is flying much needed cargo around the world with no cabin crew and a long list of quarantine restrictions. I have minimum contact with people at work, after every flight I need to get tested with the fear of picking up the virus and spreading to family after I arrive home. My latest change is that we are now in a lockdown bubble of operating crew where we move between the airport and a quarantine hotel.

Once we exit this bubble, we will have a further 3-week quarantine before we can go back to the community. Living in a quarantine bubble is for me still an evolving experience which I am not sure myself how I will cope emotionally and psychologically, again new for human kind. Never had I imagined I may end up in this situation. I will update on my regular post how I cope with weeks to come.

Besides all these changes in my job, the aircraft type, the destinations the colleagues and the frequency we fly we are hit with serious pay-cuts in the hope that we can all pull through at the end and sustain our jobs in the long run.

Needless to say, many pilots deal with the uncertainty of huge financial burdens, with no real end insight  only hope to hold onto our jobs as long as our companies can survive. We all know that by now there is nowhere else to run

This is in a nutshell how COVID has changed my working environment, in-spite of all the setbacks I still enjoy my flying very much and hope to pick up my career progress again soon. The isolation is a challenging journey which I will share with you on my social media in the weeks to come and how I experience this unexpected lifestyle change.

As for aviation, it is a wonderful industry which I am privileged to be part of and I belief we will be back in all its glory flying people with more style, to more destination and with even better services.

Best wishes to all my aviation colleagues in my next blog I will share with you how I have adapted to this big change in my life which I entered unprepared and how I have tried to transfer all the skills aviation has thought me into other careers avenues to create a new secure future for myself.

Stay safe stay healthy 350VA