A Life in Aviation Industry

This post is inspired by a travel blogger that went the distance to message me on LinkedIn asking about what is it like to work in the aviation industry. I couldn't seem to find a concise way to answer, therefore I tried my best to sum it up here.

Before I continue, I would like to highlight the fact that this is an experience from my point of view only, so it's going to be different for other people working in this industry. Also, I'm not going to bring up any political views and issues, so feel free to read along if you're looking for an amusing story about a girl who dived in headfirst into the unknown.

I joined this industry 2.5 years ago as a Management Trainee. I had never been in the aviation industry before, so I had zero background and knowledge compared to the other trainees. I think they saw my personality test result and decided that I could learn to swim while drowning, that I could learn along the way. Me? I took the job purely out of curiosity as to why they hired me and I wanted to see how far I could go as well, so I resigned from my position as an Export-Import Manager of a small fishery company.

The training was condensed into 4 months only and that was The Hunger Games for me. Forget about excelling, just to survive, I had to learn fast including the things I hate that involving numbers and be quick to read situations and people. Some people were ambitious, good at displaying themselves to the right people, good at numbers, and pretty much know much about aviation. Me? I got bullied at first because being authentic was apparently a weakness, so I had to learn to bend my idealistic self a little. During training, I lived in a haunted boarding house and the drills on excel formulas drove me crazy. I can over-analyze a literary work in minutes but it took me days to make sense a revenue dashboard. I remember one night I was sitting in a closet closing my throbbing eyes, my minus seemed too high rocketed due to stress, I got diarrhea and lack of sleep due to living transition, and all of the formulas gave me a real pain in the neck. I wiped a tear as my smartphone rang and I had to go back to class. After those short months, I came to know the series of our aircrafts, their capacity, airlines terms abbreviation, the alpha-bravo-charlie, the three-letter code of all airports in Indonesia and other countries, ticket rules, more aviation rules, how to analyze market, revenues counting, and many more.

After two months of grabbing knowledge and forced them down my throat as much as I can, I spent the next two months being sent to an island far away for on-the-job training. I took a trainee name out of a jar that happened to be my own, and an island name out of the second jar that happened to be the farthest place they prepared. The place was in Nusa Tenggara Timur. For someone that was born and raised in Java, and never been to any island further than Bali, I was focusing on staying alive more than work.

After that, we all got new titles and were sent to places again but this time they decided the place for each person, and when I thought my previous place was the farthest, this time they put me literally at the very far end of the country on purpose. I read the district's name and didn't even know where it was that I had to fake a smile in public and frantically googled it in secret in my seat. I froze, it was a tiny island in Papua.

Another thing I learned from working in this industry, is that you have to be a quick packer. Why? Even though you're not an aircrew, there is always a possibility for a sudden call to attend a meeting, or event, or anything work-related on the other side of the timezone. As a management trainee, I was given the news to attend an annual coordination meeting 45 minutes before the flight and for load factor reason, I had to take the route like this: Kupang-Waingapu-Bali-Jogja-Semarang. All that distance while preparing a district report. Even after joining the charter team in the head office, I had to go to Vietnam twice in two weeks last year, and the second was not even planned.

Besides being a quick packer, you also have to be really used to turnovers. Too many things can change the management and business flow of this industry; the world, the government, the exchange rate, fuel distribution, company debts, internal conflicts, politics, personal interests, etc. It's a big industry but a fluid one. I can't say I hate it, it is also the industry that brought me places. However, next year, when my 4 years of bond agreement comes to an end and should I get a better offer in another industry that might suit me better, I'm sure this aviation industry will always be a great story to tell in the future. :)