I have known since age 4 what I wanted to do when I was a grown up. I flew longhaul regularly and loved every minute of it. When my family and I arrived at our destination, my Father, Mother and Sister would be waving frantically to the relatives on the airport balcony while I would be walking backwards looking at the aeroplane! At the grand old age of 24, with approx. £35K saved and saving the rest at a rate of £700 per month whilst working for the Big Airways as an avionic technician on some of the latest longhaul aircraft and finishing my Aeronautical Engineering degree, I still want to do nothing else and my optimism, passion and drive to succeed are far greater than any negative thought in my mind. It is killing me at the moment, but I never let the odds keep me from pursuing what I know in my heart I was meant to do.
Sometimes I worry that the industry will have changed even more dramatically by the time I get to do what those pilots did when I was a young traveller. I was innocent then and a DC10 Zambian Airways aircraft was the biggest thing I had ever seen! Now, I work on the 747-400 and 777 fleet and a lot of the mystery of these beasts has been taken from me. As I get older and wiser, I find myself on very, very rare occasions wondering if chasing this career it is worth such a large investment in monetary and life terms. Sometimes I feel like kicking myself for 'choosing' the one career that has the rockiest path.
Everytime I sit down and think about it hard and think back to those innocent days, I can't help but feel sad that they are gone and I was never part of them as an airline pilot.
I WILL NOT miss out again.