Going from a Roster to a Routine

13 September 2020

So, what are your plans now? A question I have been asked a lot over the past few weeks when speaking to old colleagues or other pilots in general. 

Another question I get asked is do you think you will fly again?

The truth is, I really don’t know! 

Although I am confident that aviation will rebound, and in the years to come, I am sure that airlines will once again start to expand, flying jobs will become available, but with so many thousands of very well qualified pilots across the globe all in search of decent flying positions, I imagine that it’s going to be a while. Aviation inherently recovers quite quickly after a crisis. People do want to travel and, in my opinion, once this pandemic has run its course, most of this will be forgotten.

Do I miss flying? Of course, I do…., flying is in my blood and I miss everything about it, its all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life. I have been eating, sleeping, breathing aviation ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper.

I miss the early morning sunrise at 37 000 feet, and the evening’s where I would see the full moon rise behind a line of stormy Charlie Bravo’s outside my cockpit window. I miss the smell of Jet A-1, and funny enough, I even miss airline coffee.

Many of my great friendships were formed in the cockpit, spending hours on end in the cruise where I got to have some really good conversations, and most of the time a few good laughs too. In the airline that I worked for, over a period of almost 10 years, I got to fly with a small group of people, who became a lot like family, because it wasn’t always plain sailing working for an airline that had many challenges. So along with that, we found a way of supporting each other as we worked through some very tough conditions.

With that said, and although its still very early days, I find myself realizing that if things do not pan out in my flying career after all of this. I think I will be ok with that….” That’s me seeing the glass half full!”

Reason being is that all of the sudden, I am starting to see the benefits of having a normal routine! What really made me aware of this, was over the past few weeks, my little boy who is only a year and a half now, have developed this little thing we do in the evenings, where we go into the garden searching for “gogo’s” (Those are little bugs), or we spend a good couple of hours just playing, being silly, and bonding. His little laugh is so incredible, I cannot get enough of it! This little part of our daily routine has become the one thing I look forward to the most every day.

Without a doubt, my son is the sole reason I have had no choice, but to remain positive. I cannot let him see me become drowned in self pity or ever lose confidence in my ability to do whatever it takes to make sure that he is loved and taken care of.

I can’t imagine, what would possess me to want to miss any of this time I have with my family. Through this whole experience of lockdown, and no longer having a flying job, a blindfold has been taken off my eyes to a degree. Chasing aircraft type, more money, or a better type of roster wasn’t really ever my thing to begin with, not due to lack of ambition, but because I have always valued my time with the people closest to me. Having a Roster, allows you the luxury of being able to plan your life, but very little room to build a routine, which never used to phase me, because I have always thought that routine was boring!

Added to this is, I am embracing all these new opportunities and challenges that I am faced with now, there is a new element of excitement, as I chose to view the future with what prospects may come as an adventure. 

I now realize that with a routine, I have more to look forward to in a day, and this is probably what replaces that feeling of emptiness that one would feel at the prospect of not being able to fly for a living anymore.

An ex-colleague and friend recently wrote an article about his experience over the past few years. He referenced the analogy of training for and taking part in ultra-marathon’s, and how that had formed his mindset towards his positivity in dealing with the struggles of losing his job. I am not an athlete, and  I have never experienced the physical strain of what it must take to complete an ultra-marathon, but this too made me think, that you cannot develop or condition your mind and body for an event like that, without a severe amount of dedication to a routine.

A positive mindset, attitude, and a strong will to survive is what it takes to overcome this curve ball that life is throwing at the world today. Particularly those of us, whose industries have been most affected by redundancies, salary cuts, or early retirement.

I’m not saying its easy. But you have to adopt that tenacious way of thinking, and continuously remind yourself that the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t a train!