Case studies: First officer: Darren Livermore

Darren has been interested in flying from an early age.  He graduated with a degree in aeronautical engineering, then started getting his pilot's qualifications.  He is now a first officer for Aer Lingus.

I graduated with a degree in aeronautical engineering from Loughborough in 1999. I’ve been interested in aviation since I was young, and knew that I wanted to fly for a living since I was 18. Immediately after my degree I started on the long road to becoming a commercial pilot by completing my Private Pilot’s Licence at Welshpool Airport. This was only the first step and allowed me to begin to build experience flying a single-engine light aircraft. While building experience in the aircraft by flying every week, I began to study towards the many written examinations required for the Commercial Pilots Licence.

Around this time, I responded to an advertisement in a national newspaper for the Aer Lingus Cadet Scheme, an airline-sponsored scheme that offered fully-funded training then employment. I was invited for the assessment stages in Dublin, including psychometric testing, group exercises and various interviews before learning that I had been successful and would be starting on an integrated course in Jerez, Spain in October that year.

With a 15-month residential course ahead, I travelled to Spain to begin studying and flying training, which would all culminate in the issue of the Frozen Airline Transport Pilot Licence, which would enable me to take a position as a First Officer with Aer Lingus.

During the training, and following the 9/11 disaster in America, my cadet class were made redundant and had to complete the training knowing that we had no job to go to at the end. Later that year, with the training completed, I was back in the UK working for an engineering company as First Officer positions were very scarce as there had been many redundancies.

I began flying with Aer Lingus in July 2006 on the Airbus 320 fleet, flying all over Europe. In the time between completing my flying training and starting to fly for Aer Lingus, I worked in engineering and was fortunate to gain a Flying Instructor Scholarship from GAPAN, which built on my experience.

I thoroughly enjoy the challenge that every day brings at work, operating the aircraft with a captain and cabin crew on European routes. No two days are ever the same, and the job is rewarding as I’m constantly learning new things and working with new people. The routes are varied - from short, 25-minute flights from Dublin to Manchester, to much longer flights to Tenerife for example. When you have gained seniority within the airline, there is the opportunity to operate the Airbus A330 on long-haul routes.

The degree I chose to study is very relevant to the role and has made it much easier to understand the way the aircraft flies and the different ways it needs to be operated during different weather conditions.

The roster is the pilot’s calendar of what work he can expect to do each month and which days are rest days. At Aer Lingus, each pilot can express a preference through an online system about which flights he or she would like to operate, whether they be early starts, late starts or flights which include an overnight stop at one of the outstations such as London. Generally, the pattern is five days working followed by two or three days off. These rest days can be at any time of the week, and one of the downsides of the role is not having a fixed pattern of work and free days, sometimes having to work on weekends, over Christmas, etc.

Career progression from the role of first officer is usually working towards becoming a captain, responsible for the safe and efficient operation of the aircraft every day. There are many opportunities to move into training, whereby the pilot can initially teach groundschool classes and training in the aircraft simulator, with the possibility to move onto training new pilots on the aircraft later in your career.

My advice for people considering a career as a commercial pilot would be that although the training is expensive and the exams are plentiful (many written examinations and flight tests in the simulator every six months), it is a very rewarding career with good prospects for promotion. Your employer will want to see that you are able to work well in a team as you will work with a different crew every day and that you set yourself high standards, always looking to improve and continue to learn.