How I did it! How you can do it!
Good morning wannabes,
As the aviation industry is starting to boom I thought it appropriate to write a short blog on how I got into aviation, so people like myself, with not so privileged backgrounds can get into aviation with hard work and dedication!
Like most from a very early age I had a massive obsession with aircraft, I was totally mesmerised about aviation, at every opportunity I was either looking up at the sky looking or reading about planes, I knew where my future career lay!
I was lucky enough to start and obtain my PPL at the age of 17.
During my school days, I was never the brightest kid in my class in fact far from it, I struggled my maths, I remember quite clearly my career advisor telling me to think about another career path because being a pilot was so far out of my reach! (How wrong could one be!!) that being said I left school at the age of 16 with not one GCSE above the C grade.
*disclaimer: The school did not fail me, I failed myself and I learnt the hard way.
So with my aviation dream in tatters off I went and got a job scaffolding (which I still dabble in today) very soon I realised that this is not the career I want to spend the rest of my life doing, so I had to make a plan. I calculated that if I save my salary for 4 years, with family help I can fund a modular aviation course, this is exactly what I did! In the mean time I was attending night school retaking my flunked GCSE in math and English to which I passed with very high grades!
At the age of 20 I finally had enough money saved to fund my training and survive not working for two years, I embarked on ATPL in house course (14 written exams) at London metropolitan university. I studied here full time for about 6-8 months, even tho hard work and lots of studying I made some fantastic friends and had so much fun! Out of the 14 exams, I passed 12 first time and had to retake POF and perf which I passed second time round. Not bad for a lad that left school with no GCSE's
Once the ATPLs was completed I went straight to stapleford flight centre for my hour building and commercial IR. I cannot fault stapleford, it's by far one of the best flight training organisations out there and I would recommend to anyone!!
Hour building: duration about 4 weeks flying a 152 up and down the country, I spent most of this time brushing up on my nav exercises which I knew I would need once the commencement of my CPL. Please please please make sure you have fun when doing the hour building as it's pretty much stress free.
Commercial pilots licence: duration 18 days, this was by far my favourite course. My instructor was fantastic majority of flying was done in the piper arrow, passed first time. The nav exercises during my hour building really paid dividends.
Instrument rating: duration 5 weeks. This was the course everyone feared, in fact I throughly enjoyed the IR, I seemed to gel with the instrument flying. Majority was flown in the DA42 and the DA42 sim. Passed first time.
MCC and JOC was done at OAA duration 5 days. Was a good introduction to working as a crew in an airline environment.
If you want me to elaborate any part of my blog please feel free to send me a PM!
In total I paid around £55,000 for a frozen ATPL modular at stapleford.
A few weeks after I completed my training, I was sending hundreds if not thousands of CV's to every single operator you could think of. Finally Ryanair contacted me and Invited me for an interview, I paid the 300 quid for the pleasure and after a week I was told I didn't make the grade. I was shocked and gutted by determined not to let it deter me!
Over the next year, I continued to make contacts in the industry, had a part time job at ipilot (fixed base 737 simulator company) and back scaffolding full time.
Finally an opportunity arose for Wizz air, I managed to pass the interview and spent 4 years flying the 320 based in Gdnask Poland. Wizz is the perfect company to start your career, flying lots, hard winters and difficult destinations, it's the ideal place to learn your trade.
I must say, that prior the the Wizz interview I had interviews with 4 smaller operators lined up and that was from making contacts and networking.
Next I left Wizz to come home to the UK and work for another fantastic exciting company called Air tanker flying the Airbus 330. This was a new and exciting place to work flying to worldwide destinations including the Falklands via Ascension Island. I spent about 15 months in air tanker before an amazing opportunity arose to fly for another long haul operator based at LHR to which I fly for to this day, I won't mention the name but put it this way, my favourite colour is red.
On my days off I do consultancy work for CTC teaching Airbus ground school to cadets, another job I obtained through networking.
All in all I've been flying commercially now for 6 years and I very happy with what I have achieved at the age of 28.
Please free free to message me any questions and for those who want to follow me on Instagram: gym_aviator
Good luck
Last edited by A320baby; 17th Nov 2016 at 15:25.