A PILOT’S PASSION Trish is licensed to fly!
HOW VINTAGE PLANES WON THIS AIR ACE OVER
When Trish Reynolds left school she had just three School Certificate passes to her name. But this shaky academic start didn’t stop her from soaring in her chosen career of aviation, with the air buff now piloting an organisation preserving military aviation history.
It’s a dream job for the 61-year-old who loves nothing more than taking to the sky in classic aircrafts, a thrill that as general manager of the
New Zealand Warbirds Association she never tires from.
She says her love of aviation dates back to her childhood in Palmerston North, where as a seven-year-old she asked her dad if she could have a plane ride for her birthday. Later on, a neighbour who was learning to fly suggested it might be something Trish would also enjoy.
“I was in my mid-20s by that stage, so quite late to start. Plus I thought I wouldn’t be able to afford it, but I gave it a go and just loved it!”
She learned to fly in a single engine, two-seater Piper Tomahawk, schooling up in subjects such as physics and meteorology by reading everything she could lay her hands on. She gained a commercial licence, which allowed her to take scenic and charter flights from the Manawatu Districts Aero Club base at Palmerston North, got into competitive flying and then became an instructor.
“To get your commercial licence, you need to get your hours up. I wanted to do more than scenic flights, so to practise for the competitions [I entered] I would fly round and round doing circuits of the airfield and navigation exercises!”
She was also introduced to hot air ballooning by good friends, crewing early morning flights and once taking part, with a local team, in Albuquerque’s nine-day International Balloon Fiesta, the world’s largest ballooning event.
“There were around 700 hot air balloons in the sky at once,” she recalls. “You would have an armchair balloon float past you, then a pair of Levi jeans... it was incredible.”
Still, she says due to her age there were few opportunities to further her commercial flying career in New Zealand at the time. Trish became a regional sales manager for Ansett NZ, where she worked for 10 years before being made redundant, continuing to fly but “only as a hobby”.
At 39, having always wanted to travel, she filled a backpack and headed for Europe via
Asia. Winding up in
Bristol, in the UK, she was employed in the office of a commercial balloon ride company, where she crewed on big, 14-seat balloons and competed in competitions in England and Europe.
“It was very much a fun job, but very poorly paid − I was 40, I had a backpack and a bicycle: It wore thin,” she laughs.
A duty manager’s job at Bristol Airport followed. It was around this time that Trish met her future husband – as she was crawling out from under a table with two bottles of “stolen” wine. She was at a crisis management workshop and Dave, a former flight engineer who now has a safety role with the NZ Airline Pilots Association, was running it.
Reveals Trish: “There was a cocktail party in the evening, but they had a very limited budget so the wine stopped early. We were sitting in the bar, talking about how stingy it was. I knew there was some stored in a conference room, so I snuck in and found all these cases of wine under the table. I grabbed two bottles and just as I was coming out from under the table, Dave caught me!”
They married two years later and returned to New Zealand in 2013. Trish, who by then had completed a Diploma in Horticulture in England, spent the next two years studying landscape design as a full-time student.
But the pull of the skies was too strong and Trish soon found herself back in the industry.
She worked for 10 months at Pioneer Aero − a company that restores Warbirds − before her boss recommended her for her current role.
Apart from Trish and two other part-time office staff, Warbirds at Ardmore is run solely by volunteers. What began as a small group of passionate fliers buying and restoring vintage aircraft –
“having a Sunday fly and a beer afterwards” – in a single hangar has become five hangars filled with close to 35 operational WWI and WWII aircraft, including seven bought by a generous benefactor.
“Almost all of our pilots have full-time work, they’re incredibly busy people, but they donate their time to us. Keeping these old craft flying is such a passion.”
Several are women, including one who got her commercial licence in the 1960s but wasn’t hired for an air traffic control job because, as Trish tells, there were no ladies’ toilets!
Alongside being open to the public three days a week, and the annual Warbirds at Ardmore air show, members put on displays around New Zealand at places such as Wanaka and Omaka, as well as taking part in commemorative flyovers and undertaking display training and certification roles for pilots.
The organisation has also even recently partnered with the airforce to host engineering training courses to South Auckland high school students.
Adds Trish: “I have the best job. How many places can you look out your office window and see a Spitfire start up?!”
‘I have the best job. How many places can you look out your office window and see a Spitfire start up?!’