Real-life career videos and ideas for your future
Real-life career videos and ideas for your future
icould and Inspiring the Future
Michelle, Airline Captain
Easyjet
| Time Code | Audio |
| 00:00:06 | Hello everyone, my name is Michelle and I’m an airline pilot. I work for Easyjet and I’m based out of London, Gatwick. I fly the Airbus A319 and A320 and that can hold up to 186 passengers. |
| BECOMING AN AIRLINE PILOT | |
| 00:00:20 | I’ve always loved flying and I’ve always loved planes. From a very young age I was lucky enough to be flying backwards and forwards from Kenya to visit my family. But it wasn’t until I was about 13 or 14 that I decided that I wanted to be an pilot,so I’ve been at Easyjet now for 10 years and I’ve actually been a Captain for 5 years and I’ve got round about 7,500 hours flying the Airbus A319 and A320. |
| 00:00:44 | Every flying school and airline has a slightly different selection process but in general what they like to see when you’re thinking about becoming a pilot is having good grades in Maths and good grades in Physics. So those are the kind of subjects that I would focus on. As well as all of your academic studies, it’s great to have other things on the side of your studies as well. |
| 00:01:04 | One of the biggest barriers to becoming a pilot is the cost. It costs a lot of money to become a pilot. You know, training school is very expensive and then once you join an airline, you may have to pay for additional training. |
| SKILLS | |
| 00:01:15 | Some of the skills that you need as a pilot can include good teamwork skills, communicating skills, problem solving skills and I think, as an airline captain, because it’s my job to look after everyone, it’s really important that I’m able to lead the team and I’m able to make good decisions. |
| BEING AN AIRLINE PILOT | |
| 00:01:31 | So there’s lots of responsibility involved in my job because I can be looking after up to 200 people and sometimes it can get quite intense and it can be quite serious because sometimes we can be on the plane together with the crew and the passengers, you know, for 6 hours in a go and with the crew we need to bring that aeroplane back, so we sometimes have 13 to 14 hour days. So it’s really important that as a team leader, I make sure everyone has a good day and everyone enjoys themselves.. |
| 00:01:59 | There’s lots of paperwork involved with my job as well and that includes the flight time, how heavy the aircraft is, what kind of weather we’re going to be expecting en route and if there’s any special considerations, anything else that we need to consider for that day. And even though I have to get up so early sometimes, when I’m at work and I’m surrounded by all of these lovely people, it really makes it worth it. |
| 00:02:22 | END OF TRANSCRIPTION |
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