Living an aviation-jobseeker's life

Today I am celebrating my ATPL-licence's first birthday... it's quite a modest party however since so far I spent a lot of money into just... air!

I am still quite devoted to shiftleader-ing the logistics department @ Volvo's largest European Truck plant. The daily challenges in controlling the goods flow from delivery to line address, coaching 130 people, assisting in the building process of about 192 trucks a day all together are quite attractive and days lasting longer than 10h spent in the plant are no exception. However, staring at contrasting contrails in sunny skies at sunrise or bluesky evenings and often sitting behind the Piper Archer stick in the aeroclub as well as flying the magnificent DA42 G1000 Diamond TwinStar on IFR-trips from time to time... I dó realize that my real challenge, dream and aim still lies behind the stick!

But no dream to realize without a valid license off course! So, as mine was about to expire, last Tuesday I took place in the left seat of a DA42, next to a very wise and experienced examinator to demonstrate if still all goes well with my multi-engine and IFR abilities. About 100 minutes later, after a few interceptions & holdings at a local VOR as well as a vectored and full procedure ILS approach and a non-precision 2 NDB approach combined with a tastefull mix of simulated engine failures and recoveries followed by touch-and-goes, go arounds and finally a full stop landing... I was officially declared very-well-suited to maintain my license for another year ;-) and encouraged not to give up in proceeding my aviation-jobseeker's life.

Sometimes that's easier being said than done. However, if we may believe Boeing & the Chinese, 180 000 cockpit seats are to be reserved for pilots the coming decade. Hopefully not as well as we should have believed that a húúúge amount of captains would retire worldwide as from 2009, creating great opportunities for cadet pilots... actually leaving many of those [young] men without a job in 2011. Well... let's wait and see, enjoying an... aviation jobseeker's life! Although, sometimes, I do not understand why companies, requiring motivated and qualified pilots still seem to think they can only find those amongst these guys who have a flying experience of over 500, 1 000 or even more hours... minimum requirements that one, just being graduated from a flightschool, is far from able to comply with.

But sure, although not yet being payed for the job and often wondering why, I do try to enjoy beautifull panoramas from time to time such as the one seen from the left seat last Tuesday at sunset during a ferry flight to Antwerp [Belgium]. The "dark spot" you see portside is a vast, unbuilt piece of Belgium called "the Northsea" ;-)