I'm writing this post sitting in a hotel room near my home base as I have standby rostered for today and that certainly led me into being bored enough to finally decide to write something here..
As you might have guessed, I have now managed to get what I so much wanted during the years in flight school: A job as an airline pilot. I am now a First Officer flying a Bombardier CRJ-900 regional jet mainly in the regions of Scandinavia and Northern Europe. I have been an employee of the company for over a year now, been flying for about 10 months and currently have about 500 hours on type and a total time of a bit more than 1000 hours.
In addition to working very hard during the whole flight school to an extent that I really can say that I'm proud of myself, I have also been very lucky. The times were just starting to get a bit better during the last phases of my pilot education, and this led to nice opportunities from the start. A flight instructor course started in autumn 2014 in the same flight school I was enrolled in, and I decided to attend the course since there were no obvious other opportunities available at the time.
The course went nicely and everyone of us got a freelance-instructor job from the same school. I started flight instructing on PPL-level and this also led to an opening in our school's parent company, were I started flying the King Air commercially every now and then, flying mainly cargo flights between Finland and Sweden, but also some charter and ambulance flights.
My first year after graduating went by like this, instructing at my previous school and flying the King Air maybe once or twice a month. I gathered about 100 hours of instructing and about 60 hours flying the King. Then I heard about a random email address regarding a possible new regional jet operation in Scandinavia through the grapevine of our company/school, sent an application and a CV with absolutely no connections or information, and here I am now. That's how strange and unpredictable life is :)
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So, that's it! I hope you have enjoyed reading my blog and I hope that some of you find the information and stories here interesting and motivating if you are considering this profession or are already studying to become a pilot. I sure have enjoyed writing this from the beginning and as I have mentioned, I have written this as much to myself as for you all. This is a great way to look back on those few flight school years, that go by more quickly than what I'd never imagined!
I can truly recommend this job for all who are interested in aviation. For me, this job is exactly what I thought it is. If you expect the right things and and are truly interested in the core of the job itself and are prepared to work hard, this is a very nice and good way to make a living. There definitely are downsides, but for me the upsides make up for them.
Remember not to expect unrealistic things to come out of this. Sometimes it all gets very tiring. At times, you would very much rather stay at home than go flying and believe me, seeing the sunrise from above the clouds, how beautiful it may look, definitely isn't worth waking up at 4am. In my opinion, no job is better than being home with family, friends and personal hobbies. I've always known this and now that I do what I truly want to do for the rest of my life, it's all more clear.
I have the best job in the world :)
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