Aviation
Back to Aviation.
TL;DR
- Eleven years ago, I started my aviation career in marketing.
- It wasn’t confidence but arrogance, and I eventually lost my way.
- After eight years in IT, I came back to aviation.
- This is the beginning of my aviation story — the one I’ve walked so far, and the one I’ll keep walking.
Hello, Aviation
I still remember my first day in aviation vividly. I was finally working in the industry I had wanted so badly.
Maybe it was because I had wanted it so much. I was gripped by a strange, unearned confidence. Looking back, I mistook arrogance for confidence — convinced that the scraps of information and half-heard knowledge I’d picked up meant I understood this industry better than anyone.
Even so, my colleagues filled in what I lacked. We shared our experience in conversation, and together we climbed the practical walls that only aviation has.
Because those colleagues did their work quietly and well, my arrogance stayed neatly wrapped in the appearance of confidence — and I never noticed.
Misplaced confidence doesn’t hold for long.
I lost my direction, left the industry I had wanted so badly, and moved into IT.
Eight years passed. Then, in late 2022, on a day when I was thinking seriously about my career, a chance came to return to aviation.
In February 2023, I began my second flight.
This time I wanted to work differently. To understand more deeply. To actually know the thing, better than anyone.
Building on the project management and problem-solving I had accumulated in IT, I slowly recovered a feel for working in this industry.
Then came the chance to turn that feel into my own work. The company handed me the PM role on its largest project at the time — replacing the PSS (Passenger Service System).
Unfamiliar systems, unfamiliar terminology, and the interests of countless partner companies. I asked, organized, asked again, and organized again.
Reviewing the process against what I’d written down made the flow solid, and communication with the PM in India began to run smoothly.
I admitted what I didn’t know, and I went looking to learn.
Being handed the PM role on a critical project was a weight — but admitting what I didn’t know never frightened me.
I went everywhere I could learn and asked for help, and I’m grateful that so many people filled in the gaps. Then I poured in the time to make it mine, and to get it into the project.
Eight months in, D-Day arrived. I still remember finishing the PSS cutover and going home thirty-seven hours after I’d come in.
Alone it would have been impossible. It happened because of colleagues who gave everything, trust in each other’s experience, and the collaboration built on top of it.
That’s when I understood: the essence of an aviation IT project isn’t the system itself — it’s building a rhythm with the people you work alongside.
The journey I’ll keep recording
From here I want to carefully record what I learn, the systems and terms I’ve come to understand by staring at them long enough, and the stories tucked away in the corners of aviation IT.
Someone who once simply loved aviation now wants to leave the understanding and experience built up inside it in the form of writing, and to move back toward learning. So as not to lose the part of me that wanted to know the world beyond the familiar, recording will be another flight path for me.
Hoping this journey carries a long breath…