Former BA air hostess joins jetset ... as a pilot
AIR stewardess Suzie McKee got fed up serving in-flight meals to British Airways passengers – so she decided to become a pilot instead.
Ms McKee, 25, had worked as cabin crew for a year before concluding that it would be much more fun to actually fly the planes.
The languages graduate said: ‘I’d had a great time being an air hostess but I always had this picture in my mind of me in the cockpit.
‘I would do the announcements and then listen to the pilot telling passengers that they had flown them safely to their destination.
‘I knew I didn’t want to be serving chicken pasta to passengers at the back. I wanted to be at the front of the plane where the action was.
‘I would always be the one who volunteered to take the tea into the cockpit for the pilots or do the safety checks with them before take-off.’
After handing in her notice with BA, Ms McKee, of Portsmouth, got two jobs
– as a garage receptionist and barmaid – and started saving every penny she earned towards the £120,000 cost of pilot school. She managed to put away £30,000 and borrowed the rest from her parents.
Last year, she joined Flybe but, when the airline went bust in March, she decided to continue her studies at FTEJerez flight school in Jerez, Spain.
She now has just 20 hours of solo flying left before she is due to get her full airline transport pilot licence in November. ‘As a pilot you get to look out of the windows and see all these beautiful views,’ she said. ‘But the biggest thing is being able to feel like you’ve succeeded in safely carrying people.’
Ms McKee added: ‘I look back and think how weird it is that I was serving people their meals and now I’m flying the planes they are travelling in.’