The news that I was waiting for so long has arrived! My previous company called me back, in the beginning of 2022! This time I will be based in Faro, Portugal, starting in April. It will be more than 2 years after my last flight in March 2020 which was from Berlin to … Faro! 

Because I don’t have that much experience and it has been 2 years since my last flight (on the A320 family), I had almost a month of training during April, in Milan. Basically I had to redo everything; ground school for 4 days, 7 simulator sessions of 4 hours each, Airbus doors, fire and smoke training and so on. During this month we were 10 pilots, all ex Berlin pilots; the mood was good and we were all looking forward to fly again, even though some of them never really stopped flying as they had enough experience to apply almost anywhere. It was a great group and it helped a lot for the training; we all bonded really well together and I even met my flatmate there; we will have lot of fun in FAO for sure!

After the training I will have to do 8 supernumerary flights and then 20 sectors before being ‘checked’. As there are not so many trainers in my base I’ll be operating for a few days in Lyon in May and the rest will be done June and I still don’t know where. (At the time of writing, I didn’t have my roster yet.)

My supernumerary flight will be long, Faro to London Gatwick to Berlin and back to Faro. We call that a triangle flight as we are not coming back to our base after the 1st leg. This duty is almost a 12h duty; seated on the jumpseat which is not comfortable at all! But I won’t complain as I’m so happy to be back in the skies. Then it will be a Faro to Manchester and finally the same triangle from the first day. 

After that I will be heading to Lyon for 5 days, where I will start my line training. For now I have just 8 sectors scheduled from there.

In the meanwhile, I will enjoy the Algarve and its beaches!