AKASH SHARDA, GLASGOW

THERE is nothing quite like the feeling of flying over the Alps, on a beautiful morning, just you and the sky, and no connection to the ground.

It takes my breath away.

I have always wanted to be a pilot. When I was young, growing up in the west end of Glasgow, I used to spend hours looking up at the clouds, watching for aeroplanes. When I was 13, I joined the Air Cadets, and that was great experience, but my passion was always for the big, commercial jets.

When I was 16, I joined an aviation academy in Oxford, and spent the next two years here and in Arizona, training to be a pilot. It is a very expensive business – all in all, I think it cost me around £100,000. I’m extremely fortunate, I know, that my parents could support me.

I joined Ryanair at the age of 20. Four years later I became a captain, the youngest of 5000 pilots in the UK. Being quite baby-faced, some passengers are frightened when they see me – they think I am too young to be flying a plane. Even the staff, if they have never met me before, look at me strangely when I take my seat in the cockpit.

My first commercial flight felt surreal. I had been dreaming about it for 20 years.

It is such a privilege to be able to do this job. I love my ‘office’ in the air. There is no workplace like it. On land, wherever you go, your phone is pinging, life is busy. In the air, you have nothing like that. It’s somewhere I can reflect.

It is a huge responsibility, flying a multi-million-pound aircraft with hundreds of people on board, and it can be very stressful at times, if things go wrong. If there is bad weather, or strikes, or a medical emergency on board, those are difficult things to deal with, of course. Fortunately, I have never had to deal with anything catastrophic.

Flying in to somewhere like Corfu, which is beautiful and one of my favourite airports, still gives me an adrenalin rush.

When I’m not flying, I run a short term let management company called Spot Host. I was spending so much time travelling and I liked the idea of renting out my flat, but it was a lot of hassle. I came up with the idea for a company that would do all the check-ins and transfers and cleaning for you. It’s really taken off, pardon the pun, and we now have 25 staff based in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

I love speaking in schools, and hope to inspire young people. There is lots of information out there if you want to become a doctor or an engineer, but not so much if you want to be a pilot. Money is a barrier but there are ways to get sponsorship or additional resources, so it is not impossible. The sky’s the limit, in fact.

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