Soaring Spirits, Deferred Dreams: A Pilot's Story of Perseverance

It is over 15 years since I did my commercial pilot training from US.

I still remember the day when I was waiting at the Indira Gandhi International Airport to board the flight to US.

Five people had come to drop me off to the airport. Everything looked like a dream as I think of that day today.

The time spent in the US while learning to fly was the best time of my life.

Back then I had no idea in the worst of my dreams that I will be sitting at this place writing about my journey.

Unfortunately, my journey has been stalled at 250 flying hours in my logbook.

The reason is financial constraints and yes the recession of 2008.

My father had almost zero earning; I was able to do flying training by selling the ancestral property.

I did complete the training but there were no jobs as I returned back to India.

Slowly, all those who trained along with me were absorbed in the industry, as the market recovered.

But, some wrong decisions and some bad luck, and I are now working as a content writer since 7 years or so.

I feel I did not have the maturity to make way for myself to be absorbed into the industry.

I don’t know how to get back into flying and make a living from there.

It is not that I have not tried to, but none of the attempts had not been fruitful till now.

The latest one being to try to move to Canada, so I can earn and fund my training further.  

Plus there were numerous options available to log flying hours, which in my country there are none.

I motivated by wife to apply for Canada PR through express entry. At first, she did not liked the idea but upon regular insistence she finally obliged.

Unfortunately, we were not able to gather enough points so we could be called by Canada to settle there.

I had also applied to a flying school in Canada, to become current and to become a flight instructor.

Everything went as planned, I got a school that granted me letter of acceptance with minimal initial deposit.

I was granted LOA of one and a half year. It was good enough to work there and earn enough money to fund my flying.

Had this plan seen its fruition, I would have been sitting in Canada and must have been working as a flight instructor, and surely might have become the permanent resident of Canada.

Things got blocked as due to COVID-19 pandemic my visa application file was hanging in the lot for more than 2 years.

I don’t know the reason why this happened but it destroyed all my plans plus it destroyed me emotionally as well.

I got a visa rejection after waiting for more than 2 years.

One of the biggest troubles was that the majority of the immigration consultants here do not understand my requirement of immigration.

A lot of time is wasted in making someone understand and even then the confusion persists.

In India there is no option to build flying hours and the cost is way too high.

If my father had a business from which some earning was coming, I could have moved ahead with it and somehow worked out my way.

We he left us forever, our household earning were zero. I had just cleared the DGCA exams and we were searching for jobs. I was not on any job, plus my brother too was not working.

We had already sold our ancestral property so there was no earning from there either.

After spending nearly 25 million rupees in flying, my total return on this spending was zero.

It would have been better if I had opened a shop. I would have been in a much better position financially, but one never thinks of such turnarounds.

What is worse still, I am mentally and emotionally exhausted, as my wife often complains that I am always lost somewhere.

Plus I am putting in money still to get back in that industry.

Now I have little idea of how to pursue my dream. At times, I get the feeling to burn all the flying related documents.

Few years back I decided to learn welding, so I can move to Canada or the US as a skilled trades person, and eventually switch to my dream work.

The inspiration to pick this patch was received from a colleague of my who used the same technique to get into flying.

Although he is from a different country, much closer to the US, and with better options to fly, yet I decided to give this method a try here.

I wasted good two years in making this method effective.

The drawback is that welding in this country is considered as an inferior job, something not meant for those with good qualification.

I did learned welding, but it was impossible to get the job as I never looked like a labour class.

The mistake I made here was to show that I am a graduate and wanted to work as a welder.

The majority of the welders working in this country are not even 10^th pass.

I once got on the job at a welding shop in Bhanupali, a village near Anandpur Sahib, but after few days of working I was told not to come here.

Finally, after struggling for nearly two years, I dropped this plan.

There was another stint before this, and that was to move to Singapore. This plan too failed miserably.

Now, after struggling for nearly one a half decade I am taking a breather. I am trying to get my acts together on what to do ahead.

I don’t want to remain in the writing job forever, even though it is paying me, and I love writing, but I don’t want to do it for anyone, but only for myself.

Plus, I don’t enjoy writing when I have to write on a given sector over and over again every day.

Nearly three decades back when I was living in Meerut, I remember a moment when I saw a plane flying high in the sky.

I said to myself this where I want to be. I once wrote on my study desk, ‘my loft is pilot’.

Even though, after so many struggles, a thought comes to my mind, as to whether it is really worth the amount of pain I am taking.

I am sure there are other jobs that pay equally well and provide better life than being a commercial pilot.

Let’s see how the future turns out to be……..