Everyone loves an adventure. Growing up in Lincolnshire, my best friend lived on a farm and each time I went round to play, it was a proper adventure. Hide and seek in the barns, pushing our way through cornfields and staging mock battles in the treehouse. I loved exploring and I loved the sense of the unknown.
Years later, my Michael Palin books ignited my desire to explore further than those barns and fields. There was an incredible world out there which I simply had to see and what better way to do that than by becoming an airline pilot?
Short-haul flying can be rewarding. With multiple take-offs and landings in quick succession, often three or four in a day, I completely understand why some pilots love this type of flying and the technical experience that it brings.
However, in my 10 years buzzing around Europe, I never really felt as if I was going anywhere. Ten hours spent on an aircraft just to end up back where I started. On a rare occasion, when I did get to stay in the destination, it was normally at an airport hotel for 16 hours, with no real opportunity to explore.
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