Why I love my job!

  A few friends of mine have commented on recent posts, that although they enjoy them, they sometimes wonder why I became a pilot! To make up for this I decided that in this post I would give a brief insight into why I love flying, and why I am so lucky to have my job.

I’m currently writing this in a 4-star hotel in Scotland – the Shetland Isles to be precise - where I am staying for a few days for work, looking out over some of the most stunning coastal scenery imaginable, not only not having to spend a single penny (cent!) myself, but actually being lucky enough to get paid for the experience. So here are my first ideas, as I think back over my last few flights and the years which have led me to this hotel room: why do I love my job?

First of all - the view. I’m sure this must be why some people become pilots, because we see the world from a completely different perspective from everyone else, including passengers. From the threatening, boiling masses of cumulo-nimbus across the horizon to the blinding grey haze of cloud or fog, the scenery is always awe inspiring. Occasionally I am lucky enough to fly single crew, and, being completely alone at 28,000ft, especially on a clear night, seeing an endless pit of black punctuated by millions of pin-pricks of light (in the air and on the ground) fills me with a feeling of serenity I haven’t experienced anywhere else. It’s wonderful to be able to detach from the world every now and then, and just let my mind wander in a warm cockpit, all alone, several miles above the earth.

Enough of the hippie talk! The travel. I love to travel. There are millions of miles of world out there to explore, and very few people have the opportunity to enjoy the amount of travel I have through my work. Although my current job keeps me inside Europe, with only the occasional trip outside to far flung destinations in Eastern Europe and maybe North Africa, being a pilot has helped me see a lot of world I wouldn’t have otherwise seen: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea to name but a few. Each time I visit a new country I revel in the experience of new faces, new surroundings, new customs, new languages. Even neighbouring France poses challenges. I thought I had some rudimentary French from my schooldays and wondered why the local baggage handler looked at me strangely – until I found out that I had been asking him to put my passenger in the rubbish bin! (I thought I had been asking him to tell her to meet me outside!)

The challenge and the reward. Every single flight is a new and unique challenge. I have regular late night medical flights, usually involving taking a surgery team to an airport inside the UK, hanging around for several hours and then flying them to another airport. These trips are distinctive in their need for speed as delays can, literally, cost a life. There is a special section on the flight plan making Air Traffic Control aware that I am a medical flight and need priority; this means that as soon as I am in the air I am usually cleared direct to my destination and have total priority over other traffic on landing. Next time you’re on a flight and it is delayed, it could be me, frantically trying to get into an airport with a medical team on board.

Not all flights have the urgency associated with medical flights, but still pose a challenge. Flying into London Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle are always interesting, not only in the air, but also in the incredibly complicated taxing required on the ground. In contrast, some flights take me into small airports, where even finding fuel, or catering for passengers can be difficult. Each flight is, in effect, a one off.

 (Paris, on approach to Charles De Gaulle)

The community of the air. The people I work with are a fantastic bunch. Most pilots have a sort of un-spoken camaraderie. If I see someone struggling to push a plane into a hangar I will always run across and give them a hand and vice versa. There have been many occasions when I have been waiting for my passengers and another pilot has come over asking for advice on weather, routing, or a particular airport they are flying into; I will always help them as much as I can, even giving them copies of my own weather brief if they are unable to get their own. I regularly fly into very small airfields which generally only see light single aircraft doing flight training and there is always a stampede of flight instructors, students etc. wanting to have a look in my aircraft - and I always let them. I know the King Air is not a big aircraft in the general scheme of things, but put it next to a light single and it looks impressive. Future pilots love the King Air.

And finally, buttons on the roof! I don’t know why, but there is something fantastic about having a panel of buttons and switches above you. As for my first ‘bing bong’ – when I heard that I knew that I had arrived!

There are a million other reasons why I love my job (and I haven’t even mentioned the stories!) and why I am incredibly fortunate to be able to do what I do. It is also, however, just my job. It’s what I do to put food on the table, and, like any other job, there are times when you just want to be back home!