Pilot Mohamed:
Hello Everyone,
I believe that each pilot has his own aviation love story and I would like to share with you my story. I wanted to be a pilot since I was 10 years old and it was my big dream. I started to fall in love with aviation when I used to travel by airplane with my family between Egypt and Kuwait because we were living in Kuwait due to my fathers work.
It took a little bit longer to achieve my dream because after I finished high school my parents advised me to finish a Bachelor Degree before I started my flight training because their opinion was that it was important to have a university degree in case I failed my medical or I couldn't fly because of any reason I should have a backup and by that time I also didn't have enough information about the flight training.
After I finished with my Bachelors Degree in Marketing and Business Administration
from the Canadian University, I started to search and read about flight training schools because I didn't know any pilots or any friends in flight schools at that time. After long searches, I decided to go to the USA to start my flight training and get my FAA License.
In 2012 I traveled to the USA for the first time to start my flight training at Flight
Safety Academy in Vero Beach, Florida. It is one of the biggest flight schools in the USA.
Over there I had my first flight on PA28 Piper Cherokee, but after a couple of months, I
decided to move to a smaller flight school in Texas in which I flew the Cessna 152 and
finished my FAA PPL”Private Pilot License”and my hour building.
During my PPL training I started to read about the European Commercial Pilot License,
at that time it was called JAA now it called EASA and I decided to move to Europe to
continue with my Instrument Rating and Commercial Pilot License. In 2013 I moved to
Denmark and joined flight school there and after a few months this school went
bankrupt and that resulted in me lost some money. After some instructors
recommendations, I joined a new school ”Learn To Fly ”In Aalborg City, Denmark. So we can say my EASA License journey started after I moved to ”Learn To Fly" school. I started with ATPLs self-study and then I began with Instrument Rating (IR) training on Diamond DA40 followed by EASA CPL training on a Diamond DA42.
During my flight training in Denmark, I was working a few part-time jobs (waiter,
Casher, Cleaner) to cover my living expenses because my mother was paying for my
flight training and I had to pay my living expenses. It was hard to combine work and
study but it worth it.
I have learnt a lot from my flight training journey and most important lesson is that never choose flight school because of its big name. You have to ask for feedback from students there or from pilots who graduated from there because those are the ones who will give you the right review about the place. Some small flight schools have fewer students so you can fly a lot. They usually have 2-3 instructors so they can focus more on you and know your weaknesses and work on it and then you can finish faster. But as I mentioned if you decide to go to a big or small flight school always ask for feedback from people there.
After I got my EASA CPL I had to return back to Egypt and during this time there were
no job opportunities because we had revolution in Egypt. It was tough time to search for a job so I started to apply for some Cabin Crew Positions at Emirates, Qatar ..etc but every time they knew I was a pilot I got rejected. So I started to use Linkedin to search for private jets operators and send them e-mails to ask for jobs.
After few months of searching and 100 e-mails I was lucky to get a reply from the
private jet operator in Egypt and they told me they want me but I needed to self sponsor
my Type Rating. I had no choice and I agreed and I took loan from the bank to
pay for my type rating. Currently, I am FO on Hawker 850XPI Mid-Size Private jet with a total time of 1200 Flying hours. I really enjoy my job as a private jet pilot because I would say its such a unique experience as most of our passengers are VIPs, Actors, Singers and famous people like (Luis Figo, Gianni Infantino ”Fifa President”, Maitre Gims ”Famous French Singer”, AmrDiab ”Famous Middle East Singer ”..etc) and we usually fly to nice destinations
especially in summer. We fly to many awesome destinations such as Ibiza, Nice, Malaga,
Olbia..etc.
But on the other side, I am on call 24 hours a day even when I am off duty or if I
am in layover. They may call me at any time and say be ready in two hours you have a
flight. So I have to consider if I can get a flight any time of the day, but as I mentioned earlier I really enjoy and love my job so I am now used to all of the disadvantages of it.
So along with my story, you can see I have been through many ups and downs but the
most important I have achieved my dream so my advice to future pilots just focus on
your dream and do all that you can do to achieve it and I promise you that one day this
dream will become true. I know currently, its hard to get pilot jobs with low hours but
just keep searching using google, linkedin..etc and if you didn't find pilot job try to find
any job related to aviation while you searching for the pilot job and for sure you will get it
at the end.
Never Lose Hope and Keep Fighting For Your Dreams!
Pilot Mohamed has a large social media following make sure you visit him at:
Instagram: @thepilotworld.