Category: Aviation

  First Impressions. The journey from the airport to the hotel can be tiresome. After a 17-hour flight, the desire to change out of the uniform and slide into slumber can be great. Even so, I have always been fascinated by the scenery that lines …

  A Special Delivery. By night, the modern flight deck can be a serene place. Gone are the continual position reports on the scratchy HF frequencies and straining to hear the latest weather reports by the same scratchy means. Now, satellites beam the data to …

  If there’s a flip-side to the benefits of international travel, it’s the battle of the body clock. It’s currently 3:30am in Santiago, Chile and I’ve been wide awake for hours. Ultimately, I have surrendered to my sleepless state and sought solace at the keyboard. …

Lucky to be Alive. Recently, my wife and I sat in the front row as Wendy Matthews captivated the audience with her songs from the 1990s. As music is prone to do, her words cast me back to a time in my life that is …

Where to Now? For the last 14 months, I have worked towards the goal of returning to the flight deck. It was not the prime motivator, as my family and my health took pole position in that category. Nevertheless, flying again was a long term …

Chocks In and Checklist Complete. The sounds of the engines shutting down have faded. The final formal words of checklists have been book-ended with farewells. Now the Boeing 787 sits in relative silence until the next crew starts its drills to stir the jet into …

  A World Away. Returning to flying after such a long absence has been an extremely motivating experience – in stark contrast to the preceding year of mixed frustrations. From taking those first tentative steps following surgery, it is almost surreal to be sitting at …

A Hawker Hurricane and a Pilgrimage. There’s a place north of London that is special to me for many reasons. I first visited there decades ago but have returned time and again. It was the airfield where I launched my first book, “Down to Earth”, …

  Fate is the Hunter. In the classic aviation book, “Fate is the Hunter” by Ernest Gann, Gann says we must believe in our own personal fortune and destiny in order to have any chance of survival. Fate itself is indeed the hunter and when …

415 Days.. It had been 415 days since I last strapped into the flight deck and it is difficult to put the emotions of my return into words – but I will try. The pandemic saw me grounded for even longer and yet that seemed …