The End of the Beginning.
After MCC I stayed around Oxford for a few days, helped out in the OAA Open Day and at the Heathrow Flyer Show. That was fantastic fun, encouraging folk to go to oxford! Pretty sure I made oxford a cool million in my sales!! After that, I came back home to Glasgow and applied for jobs.
It was the longest most depressing and nervous few weeks of my life. On par with the IR I think. At least in the IR you knew you'd definitely get a test at SOME point, where as with interviews there's not even a guarantee that they'll even reply letting you know if you have an interview or not!!
Finally I was contacted and told that I had an interview with a major European airline in a month. What a great feeling! Now I could totally throw myself into studying everything possible about them and sharpen up all my skills and knowledge with my sights fixed on getting the job.
I moved back down to oxford as I thought I'd rather do my studying down there so if there was any problems I wasn't too far from help. I found this crummy little bedsit going cheap so rented it out for 3 months (unfortunately the shortest rent I could get) and hunkered down for a month of nothing but prep.
As my security tag for Oxford Airport still had a month left of validity, every weekend I would drive into school and use their desktop sims. I knew they were simulating a Seneca, not a 737NG, however I wanted to know the instrument procedures that I was likely to get in a sim test like the back of my hand. I flew departures and approaches from all the major UK bases that the airline operated out of over and over again just to give me a chance of having previously flown whatever I get in the actual assessment. Another reason for spending hours flying the approaches and departures was that I didn't want any of my instrument flying to take up too much brain power during my assessment, with the idea Id have more capacity to deal with whatever else they threw at me during the test. I figured the more comfortable I was under IFR conditions the more I'd be able to focus on CRM and the new aircraft I'd be presented with on the day. Plus whatever non normals I would be up against :-P.
So, the month of living in a grotty attic cupboard finally came to a close and I drove down to the assessment center. It'd be safe to say I was a little nervous at this point, however the main emotion that was coming through was actually excitement. Nervous excitement sure, but I was definitely looking forward to giving this my everything.
Now, as for the assessment itself, I'm not going to write what happens or what is involved. There is plenty of information on the Internet that other people have written regarding assessment days for different airlines, so if you're interested it shouldn't be difficult to do some digging on google to find out what your looking for. However, what I will say is that I really enjoyed the day. It was testing and challenging and eye opening yes, but it was also rather fun as well. I returned home to Glasgow to wait for the results.
As of today, I'm now employed as an Airline Pilot.
I got the call letting me know I'd got the job and I was thrilled!! As you can imagine, after 18 months of hard work, nerves and stress, finally achieving what you set out to achieve is quite a release of emotions. It was an incredible feeling, and one that I'll never forget. All thanks to the instructors at Oxford Aviation Academy and everyone else who's helped me along the way. Especially organisations such as "The Air League" who gave me flying scholarships whilst I was still at Uni, and the Royal Aeronautical Society who provided me with Gliding Scholarships during the same time period. I'm grateful for everyone involved in my journey. Its been tough, but undoubtedly unequivocally unquestionably, the best time of my life.
This was finally, the End of the Beginning...
