Imagine flying a new airplane to evaluate its handling qualities, performance, functionality and reliability. To be capable of providing recommendations to improve the airplane, and to see the impact of such work materialize in an airplane you are satisfied with. Powerful! Fun! Rewarding! Such was my concept of what I could experience as a Test Pilot and so I committed the next 10 years of my life to that quest. I left all behind. It was me and this dream, alone for 10 years.

I could not access the elite institutions that seemed to be a common denominator in so many test pilot biographies. If I could make the most of my studies, learn as much as I could, and work in the aerospace industry during my college years, I could show I was good enough to step into the Flight Test world. And so it was.

Two people were able to see the fire in me and so they believed. I was a professional and it made sense to do the best for the airplane we were developing, and its customers. I was capable of providing recommendations to improve the airplane, but instead of seeing an improved airplane, my career ended when people with higher power disagreed with such vocation. I was being punished for giving what is expected from a flight test professional. It was not the Company, it was the greed, the fear, and the ego inside the Company. The people in power. They saw me as labor and wanted me to do whatever they wished, to keep quiet, even if that meant releasing a defective airplane. There was no promotion, no career opportunities, no advancement, no recognition, no rewards for me after that. As much as I advocated for myself, I could not control the actions of these individuals.

It hurt deep in my soul, I fell in deep sadness for the next 4 years of my life and eventually lost my vocation. Nothing mattered anymore. Such trauma is perhaps only understood by those who have loved something or someone profoundly, the idealists in our society, the communities who lack equal opportunity.

My fire was dying, but a weak flame kept me going until it reignited from within to never be extinguished again. This time all I needed and wanted came from within. I retired early, started a business and fly for fun nowadays. My trauma is still there and I don’t ever want to work for anybody again. Independent I will be from now on.