Unexpected pilot in the bagging area: Life-saving flier back in the skies after touch down in Iceland
Pilot packing groceries during lockdown on her delight at taking off again
When Ailsa Collie lost her Flybe pilot’s job as the world locked down, it took her months to secure a new job handling food orders for a supermarket.
Now after almost a year sorting online ordering she is back flying and her new job has not only changed her life but is saving others, as she flies dangerously ill patients to hospital.
The 28-year-old Flybe first officer was made redundant along with 500 other pilots when the airline went into liquidation just two weeks before the start of lockdown last March.
Ailsa joined thousands of airline staff looking for work as a huge raft of overseas holidays and business travel was grounded and many other businesses put up their shutters.
The UK aviation industry was the hardest hit in Europe by restrictions on international travel with 860,000 jobs in air travel and tourism lost, according to pilots’ union BALPA. And Ailsa admitted trying to find another job was difficult.
She said: “Like thousands of others I scoured the job sites looking at everything from berry picking to supermarkets.”
She eventually found a part-time role with a 4am start 20 miles from home, at the Iceland store in Port Glasgow.
“It was so good to have a direction to go in the morning and while money is important so is work and having a purpose to each day,” said Ailsa. “There is a lot of self-respect in a job.
“I was an online shopping picker and soon graduated to team leader and while I missed flying, I knew I could get back one day, hopefully after the pandemic.”
In addition to her supermarket duties she also volunteered with other flight crew, serving coffees to exhausted frontline staff on breaks at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, and picked up work as an assistant manager at a Covid walk-in centre. Her route to a captain’s licence had begun at 18 with a cabin crew role with Eastern Airways UK.
She secured a flying scholarship with Air League and went on to the competitive Flybe programme. But after six years as a pilot she found herself grounded along with thousands of others due to the Covid crisis. This week, however, she returns to the career she loves with Gama Aviation, which operates the emergency air service. With its specially modified cargo door and medical interior, her Beechcraft King Air 200 is the type of aircraft used by the Flying Doctor Service in Australia’s remote interior.
Based at Glasgow Airport, Ailsa will transfer patients to hospital from remote areas such as the Western Isles.
“The ever-changing Scottish weather will be my biggest challenge as it goes from clear and sunny to misty with heavy rain in minutes,” she said.
“But I feel incredibly lucky to have got this job because of its special life-saving missions and to be flying again. I hope my pilot colleagues still looking for work soon secure it.”
Ian Mcgill, Gama Aviation service delivery manager, said: “Ailsa stood out from the hundreds of other candidates.
“Her flying ability and determination to take on any job at any time showed an unwavering enthusiasm for work.
“There were so many excellent applicants but Ailsa was the best.”