Being a pilot was my dream

Actually, for me being a pilot was my dream since I was 4 years old, so I don’t really call it a change of career but really finding my dream career. 

After finishing my Secondary school, I tried to look for how to be a pilot in Algeria and what I got is 3 conclusions: 

·         Have a lot of money (between 80 and 150 million DA) to go study as a self-sponsored trainee pilot.

·         Join the military to be a military pilot, but I found out that I might end up as a mechanic instead besides I was against joining the military even for my dream.

·         Waiting for Air Algérie to launch a recruiting competition, but everyone I asked at that time told to forget it because Air Algérie will never do that and even if they do the list will already be prepared before even arranging for the competition.

Clearly the first point wasn’t really a choice for me and you know why, the second one I already said why, as for the third choice: well at that time nothing was saying that Air Algérie might organize a competition soon so I had to assume what the people I asked told me is true.

So, I moved on and went to university to continue my studies in computer science far away from my dream.

1.     What did you do when you discovered you can’t follow your dream?

To be honest, it was a very sad moment in my life, discovering that I can’t pursue my childhood dream anymore. But I always kept my love for aviation in my heart, my eyes were always turned to the sky as soon as I hear an airplane passing. I also installed Microsoft Flight Simulator on my computer and tried to educate myself on how to fly the B737 between Constantine’s Airport and Annaba’s airport (I must have done that flight 100 times).

 Also on my first year in college we were asked to do an internship of 15 days in a company of our choice so we can discover the world of business.

Again, I took the chance and asked my father’s friend who works as an air traffic controller if he can accept me as Intern which he kindly did. So my internship at “l’Etablissement Nationale de la Navigation Aérienne” based at Constantine’s Mohammed Boudiaf international airport took me in a journey inside the control tower where the controllers were kind enough to explain to me how different systems like the radars actually work, I also got the chance to go on an Instrument check Inspection with one of the technicians who explained to me how and Instrument Landing System (ILS), the VHF Omni-directional Range (VOR), the Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) and many other systems function. I learned a lot during these days about aviation and about how much I love it, so I applied all what I have learned about the ILS in MS Flight Simulator and I managed to use it to do my first ILS approach to runway 19 in Annaba’s Rabah Bitat International Airport using a B737. 

But what I didn’t know is that 5 years later I will be sitting in a room to be interviewed by 2 CAE Oxford Aviation Academy employees (one of them was Bryan Field who worked for British Airways for 10 years) to see whether or not I deserve to be chosen to start my training to be an airline pilot at one of the well-known aviation training schools in the world. And to my surprise I got the question what did you do to keep the dream alive? To which I answered using what I learned in those few days 5 years back at that 15-day internship. 

So I took my chance and one year after that I’m writing these lines after I got back from a training flight this morning Alhamdulillah.

2.     How did you successfully being chosen to be a future airline pilot by Air Algérie?

I was scrolling down my Facebook news feed and there it was, a picture, posted by a friend of mine, from El-Chourouk journal saying that Air Algérie is organizing a 200 pilot recruiting competition .

In fact, it wasn’t easy at all, when I first saw the picture of the announcement on the internet I unfortunately assume that it’s not real and even if it is I can’t get in because all these 200 places will be taken by the sons and daughters of those already working at Air Algérie.

 Lucky for me I was wrong. I remember that the application deadline was set to Wednesday November 5^th, 2014. Before that I met a friend of mine whom I have known for 5 years and we became friends because of our mutual love for aviation, he was the one to convince me to try my luck and that’s what I did I prepared every paper and sent my file Wednesday morning hoping that It wasn’t too late. 

Less than 15 days later Air Algérie started calling accepted people to come take the first contest, the only problem is I have received the e-mail on Wednesday November 19^th and the contest was on Friday November 21^st which actually gave me just one day to try and remember what I have studied more than 5 years ago in mathematics and physics which was basically impossible especially that I didn’t have at my disposal any of my copybooks from the secondary school days because they were all at home 400 kms away.

To be continued …

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