Back to Work!

It's been five months and two weeks since I last worked, flaring that big old outdated Super Puma L2 onto the ramp of Rzeszow Poland, having thoroughly enjoyed my last flight from Prague, over the snow covered mountains of Northern Europe.  I closed the throttles, killed the batteries, and that was that.  No more work for me.  Following a pretty awesome nine month job in Gabon, we had ferried the two helicopters all up along the West Coast of Africa and through Europe just to put the ole gals in storage, as the oil market crumbled around us.  Since then I've been applying for jobs the world over, with little hope in actually finding anything as all the companies were still cutting back on operations and costs.  Actually they still are, but I just got lucky.






I'm now in Northern Italy undergoing my recurrent training on the AW139, with the Chief Pilot himself, and a small contingent from the Burkino Faso Air Force.  I'm a check pilot, instructor and Search and Rescue captain/instructor on the type, as well as a certified simulator instructor, so I don't expect too much difficulty, but it has been over a year and a half since I've last flown one of the sexy Italian beasts, on a SAR contract in Paramaribo, Suriname, so I'm studying hard.  I'll actually take to the controls again this afternoon in the simulator and I'm thoroughly looking forward to it!  By far it's been thee longest period where I haven't flown a helicopter in over thirty years.

The market hasn't really recovered at all, I just got lucky, and perhaps my qualifications gave me an edge, but I'll take it!  There is a possibility that the job may even be short lived, and I'll keep an eye out for longer term solutions, but in the meantime, it's nice to be busy again.  Travelling and living out of my suitcase once again, I did get out hiking in the mountains near the Swiss border on Monday.  Loving life!