Taking Flight: Journey from the Lowlands to the Pacific Skies
Growing up in The Netherlands, aka Holland, and never considering flying or anything remotely practical, I scraped through school with a marginal pass in basic math but no sciences. Reasonable marks in three languages, economics and history saw me through. Following family tradition, I then went straight to university gaining a Master of Science degree in Business Administration. Proving that the choices made in your late teens do not have to determine your life and career path, I ended up having a varied, challenging, and exciting aviation career, touching down in Aotearoa on the way. After over thirty years I still enjoy flying and strive to keep learning and improving. Read on to either be inspired or otherwise find out where you can make the best choices for your aviation journey.
Captain Finn Zwager doing what he loves best
Flying anywhere was always out of the question for my family in the days before low-cost operators. Packing a tent and driving two- or three-days South was the standard European summer holiday. Until in my twenties we went on a once-in-a-life-time family visit to my uncle who owned a flower farm in Kenya. While the flight to Nairobi in a 747 wasn’t terribly inspiring, sitting right next to the pilot in the small twin to fly the ‘last mile’ to the farm soaring over the wide-open African plains was super exciting. I decided then that I somehow had to be part of that club.
A start in Old Zeeland
Fortuitously during the summer months, I co-ran a windsurfing school in the province of Zeeland – close to Veere where Abel Tasman was born who infamously ended up bestowing New Zealand one of its names. Veere is close to a small airfield and with the money I earned running the windsurfing school – and doing several other side jobs in winter – I started flying lessons. In Holland, which lacks any general aviation, taking the ‘self-improver-flying-club’ route was neither easy nor straightforward. There was little information on how to go about things cleverly, limited study material and I had to work many hours to pay for each flying hour. It was more of a character-building exercise rather than an optimal flying education. With quite a few stalls, flat spins and loops on the way, I gained my CPL-IR and frozen ATPL in a little over four years, and still graduating from uni too.
The Eastern Africa bush
With only the minimal CPL hours, not having attended the KLM or Martinair flight academies and before all the European pilot-cadet schemes that now exist came to be, there was no work for me at home. Where I was able to get a job was in Kenya where I was put straight onto piston engine twins. Allowing a low time procedural IFR single engine pilot coming from a dead-flat country (hence the French call it the lowlands) with accurate weather forecasts, lots of navaids and ATC coverage throughout, straight onto twins with zero route training in an area lacking any facilities and plenty of big hills including the highest mountain in Africa is a good idea, is highly questionable. I barely escaped with my life that initial period. Flying became less of a survival course when I got onto Twin Otters and King Air 200 flying with experienced captains, which is a much safer way to go about developing flying skills and practical rather than frozen-APTL-book, knowledge. As most of my flying was for NGOs, UNICEF and World Food Program throughout eastern Africa, the chaos created by the war for independence in South Sudan, the Rwanda genocide and the warlords in Somalia meant I was kept busy.
Not too busy to meet my wife, a Gizzy girl traveling through Africa on her way back home after her long OE. We tied the knot in Kenya and moved to Holland where I had a short stint on a King Air 350 flying for the wealthy owner. Now finding myself in demand as a 2,500-hour twin turboprop pilot, I soon landed a job as B757 FO with a company aptly named Air Holland Charter. After a mere two years, they promoted me to B737 captain. Timing is everything and clearly, they were desperate.
Finn with the love of his life
Emirates
Seeking some sun and a place halfway between Europe and New Zealand we then jumped at the opportunity to join Emirates in the days nobody had ever heard of Dubai. Joining as a 777 FO I regained my command after only three years which meant there had only been nine years between my first commercial flight to becoming a 777 captain. Not bad. I went on to captain the A330, A340 and finally the A380 which I flew for almost eleven years. All the while Emirates enabled me to work as a pilot recruiter, fleet- and flight safety manager, making effective use of several of my degree skills.
Spending twenty-one years in one place that is not really home seemed like a long time, so it appeared a good idea take up a small jet-flying job in New Zealand. ‘Timing is everything,’ I said earlier but this choice I could not have timed any worse. I put in my Emirates resignation just when the news came that some people were ‘having the flu’ in China and we ended up landing in Auckland on the last Emirates flight before the two-year COVID lockdowns started. Jobless like so many other pilots at that time.
New Zealand and back onto big jets
After gaining half a Post Grad Diploma in Occupational Health and Safety in four intense months, interesting but not terribly inspiring stuff, I landed a position as a King Air 350 and 200 captain at an air ambulance operator based out of Auckland. What helped me get a flying job right in the middle of COVID, and strangely finding myself fairly often as the only aircraft airborne in the whole of New Zealand, was studied and worked and beyond flying. Keep that in mind for your own career, especially considering you may be unlucky and lose your aviation medical later in life: Have another skill set handy.
As landing a King Air is rather different from an A380 I had to rediscover some ‘hand flying’ skills myself but eventually I got the flare height down low enough. I even managed to get a D-CAT instructors rating allowing me to tell others how to fly a King Air.
When resigning from Emirates I hadn’t realized how much I would miss flying the big jets around the globe so now I am flying A330s around The Pacific for Fiji Airways.
Find Finn!
‘Making your luck’
My flying career narrative is just one of numerous interesting ones, many of whom I heard while conducting recruitment interviews.
Looking back on those stories and on my own career so far, I find that successful pilots are not only those blessed with heaps of talent or those making all the right choices at school-age, but often those that have the tenacity and resilience to develop the required competencies and skills in face of obstacles.
John’s story is of course a prime example of overcoming obstacles. But by being tenacious and resilient you can make that bit of luck we all need, such as getting a Pauwels Flying Scholarship one day, work for you.
