Today I was awarded a 3-hour flying scholarship from The Air League!
This is a fantastic achievement, especially as it’s my first time applying for a scholarship through the organisation. I’m excited about the networking and mentoring opportunities it will offer going forward.
Since starting this journey, I’ve already met some incredible people who were awarded 12-hour scholarships. Speaking with them and seeing their passion for pursuing this dream has helped me identify areas to work on for future scholarship and job opportunities.
Without giving too much away, two areas I felt I could improve following my interview were my understanding of pilot competencies and staying up to date with industry news. I’ve also recognised the importance of being more involved in the aviation community. Although it is the minimum number of hours I could have been awarded, I feel extremely fortunate, as I know there will have been a lot of disappointed young adults across the country throughout this process.
If I think of this as a real world value, it has offset the cost of the Class 1 medical I’m undertaking tomorrow – so I’m very pleased with that!
As you might have seen in my blog post Choosing a Flight School, Flight Training London was one of the school’s I visited – the facilities are incredible but the cost of training was outside of my budget, so I’m ecstatic to get some hours with the team there as I’ll need to use them for an MEP and MEIR in the future.
Finally, thank you to my interviewers Dipeet and Rob for providing me with this stepping stone into aviation, they may never see this blog but they both had a profound impact on me.
I asked my grandmother for advice on which interview group to choose. She passed away during the week of the interview, but before she did, she told me to choose Group 2. As it turned out, both interviewers had unexpectedly relevant connections to my journey. Dipeet is now flying the Boeing 777 for British Airways, having trained via the Modular route, just like the path I’m pursuing. Rob came from a Information Security background, much like mine, and shared that he wished he had made the switch to commercial aviation. Although the interview itself was brief, I like to think it was her energy that brought us together.
Modular Pilot Kiran 