Jetgala - FALL-WINTER 2022

13 B E F O R E T A K E O F F In t e r v i ew by Son j a Pi on t ek , Image s by Son ja Pi on t ek and Car go lux flying a difficult approach into NewYork during a snowstorm.Another challenge is the severe jetlag we face.Try to imagine what an accumulated jetlag of multiple large time differences over a period of up to ten days feels like and how difficult it would be to sleep, let alone perform at a high level during times dictated by your schedule rather than your body.To mitigate this we have differentiated duty times depending on time of day. What was your most spectacular moment in the cockpit? It is impossible to narrow that down to only one.With exactly 13527 flight hours to date I have been blessed with so many unique moments.There was for example a night flight over Africa at about 45.000 feet of altitude with absolutely no light pollution – I was in awe of the universe as my colleague and I gazed into the millions of stars above. Other spectacular moments are the numerous flights with incredible northern light displays. Or the days where we have multiple sunsets in one flight. One thing I particularly appreciate about Cargolux is that I can still manually fly the airplane, including visual approaches even into challenging airports. I love my job and would not have it any other way. Read the full story on jetgala.com. As a freight pilot, what do you usually transport? We fly pretty much anything but often we don’t know details about our load as there simply isn’t any need to know.We are, however, always informed about dangerous goods.Another thing we get informed about are cooling requirements, e.g. for pharmaceuticals, flowers or live animals. I’ve personally flown race horses all across the globe, as well as numerous wolves.A few years back, Cargolux transported two fully grown beluga whales from Shanghai to Iceland where they were successfully released into the world’s first open water beluga whale sanctuary. For this unusual and highly sensitive cargo, special transport devices had to be custom designed. What does a normal workday look like? It’s probably easier if I share what a work week looks like as our rotations usually take five to ten days and include multiple layovers across the globe. My last shift for example was Luxembourg – Novosibirsk – Shanghai – Novosibirsk – Zhengzhou – Anchorage – Chicago – Miami – Luxembourg.You often wake up in a hotel room and don’t know what continent you are on, let alone which city you’re in or what time it is. From a pilot’s perspective, what is your experience with Singapore Changi Airport? I love flying to Singapore. Changi is one of the most efficient airports and a true pleasure to fly into.A rather unusual aspect for take-off is the requirement to take into consideration the ships that are passing near the end of the runway. What was your most challenging situation on a flight? During my 26 years of professional flying I have encountered a number of challenging situations, especially around bad weather approaches into demanding airports like