Soaring Beyond Challenges: The inspiring journey of Emma Henderson - Pilot and Leader

Speaker 1: 0:04

I knew about halfway through the sim that I wasn't doing very well and I thought I've just got to try and salvage as much of this as possible. But I sat at two o'clock in the morning in the debriefing room with the instructor, who was also a friend, and it was all for him because he and I knew each other quite well, and he said I'm really sorry, emma, but I can't pass you. And I said I know you can't Hope it was rubbish. And so we debriefed and talked about the things that I'd got rolling and the things I could have done better, and I was able to really debrief him because I knew the things I should have done. And I just remember driving home at three o'clock in the morning with tears rolling down my face thinking that's it, I've just failed the biggest challenge of my life. And it was horrible, it was just. It was bewilderingly difficult to accept that at the age of I think I was 41 or 42 I just failed for the first time in my life.

Speaker 2: 1:01

Hi and thank you for giving your time to Unlimited Seating. I'm your host, sanila Samuel. Through these conversations, unlimited Seating aims to inspire, educate and build a community that promotes and celebrates inclusion and diversity in a world where female leaders are still an exception and not the norm. Hey, hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Unlimited Seating. I'm extremely honored to have as my guest today Captain Emma Henderson, mbe. Here's a little about Emma. Emma is CEO at Project Wingman, an organization that Chico founded, and it's a well-being charity that supports NHS care workers with their mental health. Prior to that, emma was trained as a pilot in the Royal Air Force and then worked at commercial airliner EasyJet, rising to the rank of captain. As you will hear, emma is an inspirational and motivational speaker to businesses, schools and events. For her outstanding contribution to social good, emma had a number of awards and nominations to her name, including an MBE, which she was awarded in January 2021. Emma, so honored to have you as a guest on Unlimited Seating. Thank you so much for making the time.

Speaker 1: 2:25

Well, thank you so much, sanila. It's so great to be able to do this with you. Say thank you for asking.

Speaker 2: 2:30

I had the opportunity to hear you speak at the Iowa conference last month and the way you engage the audience came across as so humble, with such a strong leader and such an inspirational speaker, and knew that I wanted to share your story on Unlimited Seating. It's going to help so many people.

Speaker 1: 2:48

Thank you, I really hope it does. I really hope it helps people to understand that they can really reach for the skies Literally, literally.

Speaker 2: 3:00

So I'm always curious, Emma, to understand how people choose their career. Right? You have such an esteemed career, working as an airline pilot, which we don't see. Many female airline pilots, right? I'm always excited when I see one. How did you get into it? When did the bug bite you?

Speaker 1: 3:23

Well, the bug bit me when I was a child and I was always really fascinated about things that flew, because I just loved watching birds and I used to like making models of what air balloons and planes. And we used to crawl all over old World War II planes at Duxford when my mum and dad would take us on day trips, I think, because we used to fight a lot and I think it was good to get us out of the house. But so I always had that interest, but I didn't really know how to get into flying. I don't come from a flying family. So actually, although I really wanted to do that and I must have pestered my parents quite a lot, because they bought me a flying lessons for my 18th birthday and I really wanted to carry on flying but we didn't have the money to pay for the flight training. So I went down a more traditional route of going to university. I did a history degree. I thought I would become a lawyer, so I thought I'd do a history degree and then do a law conversion, which, funnily enough, my daughter's now doing. But when I was at university I discovered the university air squadron. So I joined and spent two years being trained by the Air Force to fly an aircraft called a Bulldog, in full flying suit and Harrier pilot's boots and a proper bone dome and everything, and that set me on the path towards becoming a pilot professionally. But actually I then also met the man who's now been my husband for the last 28 years. I met him the first weekend I was down at Harrier Finningley where I was training, and so when I got to the end of university, rather than joining the Air Force which I did, put my papers in and I went through selection I actually thought I don't want to spend the first three years of our lives together because we were getting married by that point. So I got married and we built a house and had babies and I didn't actually think I'd fly again. So the opportunity came up for the second time when we were sent to live in Auckland, new Zealand, on a military exchange tour and I came back as a fully qualified commercial pilot. So I spent three and a half years flying around the skies of the North Island of New Zealand, came back to pick up, I was an instructor here for three years back in the UK and then I was literally in the right place at the right time, because it still wasn't possible or easy to get an airline job, even though I was qualified. And then EasyJet just opened up their doors. They took 12 already qualified commercial pilots in to do their type rating course and I was one of them. So I found myself suddenly flying the aircraft I wanted to fly, working for an airline, and so it's a very roundabout way. It almost happened by accident, but it had been a dream ever since I had been a little girl, so it was a very roundabout route.

Speaker 2: 6:19

What I really like, emma, is you didn't let it go right and managing three kids in self, especially when your husband has a tough schedule, it's like heading to the next jobs, and I remember the last time we spoke you did talk a bit about how you worked through getting that commercial pilot license. Working around different schedules and three kids means 10 different schedules, absolutely. So do you share a bit about that book? Because when you said that you got it it sounds so much easier, but I'm sure it was really hard.

Speaker 1: 6:57

It was hard work, Absolutely, Because when I started flying to the second time we were living in New Zealand, 12,000 miles away from our friends and family. So obviously we started to make friends when we were living there. But you know, there's a big difference between saying to your next door neighbor that you've known for six months can you watch the kids for me? And saying mum and dad, can you come and do that? So I really had to just juggle. And I think that one of the things I often say to people is that we can have it all but you have to make sacrifices. You can't actually be there and do everything and have the top level career as well. So the sacrifices I made were basically my free time. I would drop the children off at nursery when we were living in New Zealand. They'd either go to nursery or to school and then I would come home and I'd either go and have a flying lesson or I would study for the exams. I had to sit and I did that for three years and sometimes I did that when my husband wasn't there. So I remember when I sat my private pilot's license flight test, that happened in the second week after he'd gone to Malaysia for three weeks and in the first week we moved house. On the Monday and the following week I did my private pilot's license and I really don't know how I managed to juggle all of that. But I suppose I just prioritized. You know, I've got to keep the children alive and I've got to keep them fed and I've got to keep them clean and I've got to make sure that certain other things happen, and I just had to prioritize and fit in around everything else that was happening, the flying that I needed to do. And then we got to a point where it was a real struggle to work out how to do childcare and me work. So we made the decision to send our children to boarding school. Because I'd got my job with EasyJet by then and my husband had done an amazing job. I sort of disappeared off down. We were living back in the north of Scotland by then, which is where we are now, and my husband did an amazing job of juggling his full time career with school drop offs and pickups and he was very lucky that the school they were at was next door to his office building so that they did spend a lot of time in his office drawing on the whiteboard while they were waiting for him to finish work. But that was a real struggle for him and really for me as well, because I just worried all the time that he wasn't going to be able to do stuff with them while they would get bored or they wouldn't get to their clubs. So actually we have the boarding school six miles away called Gordonston. We just said that school is closest, we will send them there and that's what we did. So that was the sacrifice really that I ended up making as a mother, because I went from being the sort of mummy that made Play-Doh in a saucepan on the top of the stove and did finger painting with the children and they were always allowed to get messy and explore the world and suddenly I had no control over what they were doing with their lives and in fact sometimes I didn't even know where they were, because I'd come home midweek for my days off and I'd say to my husband oh, I'm going to go to school and see Thomas, and he'd say, oh, no, you can't. He's on an expedition, he's not there. I love it. Why would I not do this? I have his mother. So you know it was a big learning curve for us all as a family when I first started working because I was working away from home as well, and then subsequently my husband was posted down to England, so we left the children behind basically at boarding school and we came home every three weeks. One of us was always at home for either a leave out weekend or a school holiday, or the end of term or the starter term, or they came down to us. And it was really hard but we got into this routine where we understood that when the children were home for holidays that was their time, so we didn't arrange anything for ourselves in that time. That was our time with our family. So we had to make that priority so that in order for me to be able to establish myself as a full time airline pilot.

Speaker 2: 10:57

Hello, what you said about you can't have it all right. What I'm getting from your journey is you can't have it all at the same time. It absolutely think of it as a marathon where you're building it and there's different parts in your life where I know you prioritize at various different parts in that journey. So I think, a really valuable lesson. I think it's hard. Sometimes we get frustrated oh, I'm not doing great at home and I'm not doing great at my career. But it's just to take the time. What's important right now and how can you organize your life in a way to focus on the priorities right and whatever you can maybe outsource for it? Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 11:42

Absolutely definitely outsource, and in our case it was. We needed childcare, we needed to educate our children, so boarding school worked for us, but for lots of people either can't or don't want to do that or don't have the opportunity to do that. It's the thing that's not working at home is because you're struggling to keep the house clean all the time, or you're struggling to get the ironing done. Hey, someone to do that. When I was working, it was a no brainer for me because I just thought actually I'm not here regularly enough to make sure that the house gets cleaned regularly once a week. And actually, when the children at home, I don't want to do that. I want to be spending my time with them and it's okay to ask for help, but it doesn't have to be paid help. It can be friends, it can be neighbors, it can be family. It's okay to do that. There is no expectation that you have to be this kind of superwoman who has this super career and manages to keep her home looking like it should be in a magazine all the time. You know a home is where you live and I think that's really important.

Speaker 2: 12:43

Absolutely so. Get a bit into your time at EasyJet. You were there for quite a few years. You're earning your hours of flying and you're continuing to grow. I guess a couple of different elements I'd like to get into with you, probably even when you were getting trained at the Air Force. There's not a lot of women, I'd say, probably getting trained to be pilots in the Air Force or as pilots at a commercial airline. Did that, did you feel different? Did you feel like you were part of a much smaller group? And how did that also probably feed into your career growth? Because you obviously grew and went to the level of captain?

Speaker 1: 13:28

It's funny actually because, yeah, you know the whole being a woman scene. It just never crossed my mind when I was going through the pilot selection to the University Air Squadron. I just thought I'm either going to be good enough or I'm not. I'm either going to get through. The only thing that occurred to me about being female during that process was that obviously guys were expected to wear suits to the interview and I thought, well, what do I do? Do I wear a suit with trousers? Do I wear a suit with a skirt? A friend who's still in the Air Force she was the intake before me, which was actually the first year that they took girls into the University Air Squadron, even though women ferried aircraft around the world during the war. Yeah, then suddenly you got to the 50s and 60s when women weren't allowed to even fly commercially. So it just hadn't really occurred to me and I suppose, because I hadn't grown up in that flying world, I didn't have that preconception. So I just went along and I did the interviews and I did the aptitude tests and I did all the things they asked me to do and I got a place on the squadron. And, equally, when I became an instructor, there were lots of female instructors at the flying schools that I worked at, so that didn't seem odd to me. And even when I applied to EASYJET, the thing that I thought was the hardest bit was the fact that I was a low hours pilot and I needed somebody to employ me. So even then it didn't occur to me about the female male ratio. When I became a captain, I was one of at the time fewer than 400 female airline captains in the world, and that number is still less than 500, which is mind blowing really. I probably know two thirds of them no people. The whole thing about being a woman really didn't crop up until much later on. When somebody said to me, oh, you'd be a really inspirational figure for young women, and I said why? I didn't really understand because to me it was just completely normal and I guess my family didn't give me that preconception either that it had never occurred to me growing up, because I was female, that I would have any problem getting a job anywhere. So I think I was very lucky to grow up in the 70s and 80s with parents that were so progressive, I suppose.

Speaker 2: 15:48

So give us a bit of a flavor. Emma, I've been in the corporate world. A lot of them people I interact with are in that corporate setting, so can you share a bit with your journey growing and getting to the level of captain, right? What is it that you really focused on? Was that your aim, that, hey, I need to get the captain? Was there a time span there for us in the corporate world we always focus on, hey, you need to build sponsorship and advocacy and a lot of other elements apart from just work, right? Can you? For somebody who was interested in a similar career, what would you give advice here? These are the things to focus on. First, you get your license, but then how do you continue to advance your career?

Speaker 1: 16:34

Well, you get your license and then when you start working for a passenger airline, you sit in the right-hand seat, so the captain sits in the left-hand seat and the first officer sits in the right-hand seat, and that's where you start and you spend the next few years of your career learning your trade or learning your craft really. So you know how to fly and you've passed the exams and you know how the aircraft works and you start to learn the company, not just you've learned the operating procedures because you've passed your type rating. So you then really are building up experience so that it's not when you go to an airport it's not the first time, and you start to know from experience that when you come into land at a certain airport, there's a road just before short finals that will make you have a little bit of a bump, because the heat difference between the dark surface and the light surface around it, yeah, it's that sort of experience that you build up and you learn how to read passengers and you learn how to read a day and you're basically, when you become a first officer at an airline, you are a captain in training. So what airlines are looking for is your management skills and your ability to lead and your ability to be part of a team. Play, to be a team player. Be part of a team and I think that's really important because becoming a captain isn't a right-of-passage. You do have to earn it, but some airlines will take longer to get you there than others. So it's a thousand hours a year, but it's limited at EasyJet to 900. I flew 875 hours in that first year at EasyJet and it was hard work. The best advice I was given was by my base captain and he just said when I first started. He said just keep your head down, work hard and just get on with it and you'll be fine. And he was a very straight talking New Zealander and he just said build your reputation that way. So I decided I was going to turn up early for work all the time so that I could stand and have a coffee and then still be on time for my report, so that I could get a reputation for being reliable, being good, always turning up, and it meant that on the one or two occasions in my whole career I only ever missed two flights and both times it was because of traffic. And that was great because it meant that I built this reputation that I was reliable and I was careful. I was cautious about making decisions. I learned from people I was willing to take on board other people's opinions that, without having to become them, you're chameleon when you're in the right hand seat of an aircraft because you really have to be whatever the captain's expecting you to be every day, and the captain will be different every day. You just have to sort out the week from the chaff. It's like when you have a baby. Actually, everybody in the world will give you advice about how you should manage your pregnancy and how you should bring your children up. And I found the best way to do that and it's the same with flying and say, yeah, thank you very much for explaining that to me. And then you take the bits you want and you dump the bits you don't need.

Speaker 2: 19:36

So I understand you have to be adaptable. Right, there are the standard procedures, operating procedures what you should do, shouldn't do when flying that, being that team player, knowing when to lead, knowing when to sit back, it's so critical as well to growth, which is a similarity I find as well with, say, any other job. Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 19:57

And it's a very people-orientated role as well, because although there's two of you, or in a bigger airline there might be three of you sitting in the flight there, right, actually, there's at least four people in the back of the aircraft to your flight attendants, and in a big airline it might be many as 10 or 12, 20 people potentially on a big airliner. They are part of your team, so actually it's worth making sure that you keep them on side as well, because you don't know when you're going to need them. Obviously, they make you tea and coffee as well, which is really great, but actually the reason that you need to build your team is because they're the ones that are going to notice if there's something going on in the cabin. They're the ones that are going to notice if there's an unusual smell or if there's a passenger that's becoming unwell or anything that's going on that could affect your day. It's then they're going to work with you to resolve that situation. So I always made a big effort to make sure, actually not just because of my job, but because they were nice people. I think it doesn't matter if you're working for an airline or in any business, just be nice. It doesn't cost anything, and those people remember that. So I built myself this reputation of being somebody that people liked working with and it paid massive dividends later on, when I either would have a problem with a slight. That was the delay that I needed to go and speak to I-rate passengers. Nobody really wants to go to the gate and speak to 180 angry passengers who've been left for two hours, but my whole team came with me on the day that happened to me because I said this is what we're going to do. Who's coming with me? And because I'd spent all that time and effort making sure that I was looking after people. They knew that I wasn't going to abandon them and that I was going to look after them at the gate while we were looking after the passengers Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 21:47

I think that is so important. You build your team every flight.

Speaker 1: 21:51

I will say yeah, every single day you're doing that, you're practicing, you're putting into practice everything that you believe. And when you become a captain, that makes the day, because you lead the day then and you can choose to turn up to work and say I hate the company and I'm fed up with the weather and the strikes are ridiculous. Or you can choose to turn up to work and say right, come on then, team, how are we going to make this work? Today, and it's the same throughout any industry. Actually, absolutely. That's how you present yourself to people.

Speaker 2: 22:25

So I'm very conscious that you were doing all of this while your mind is still. You have three kids. There is still a home to go home to and do stuff Right. So there is that huge personal element. As you continue this journey, which you obviously enjoyed, but I also know in the couple of times I'll be talking, you had a very challenging personal health situation that also affected your health, your personal life and then also your career. I would love for our listeners, for you to share your journey and how you got out of that, emma.

Speaker 1: 23:06

Yeah, that was probably the most challenging time of my life, to be honest with you. Everything was going great. I'd got my dream job, I was learning my craft in the right hand seat of the aircraft and I was well on my way towards becoming a captain. And I had gone into the airline with a thousand hours instructing time, so I was already ahead of the rest of my coursemate in terms of getting command and everybody assumed I'd be the first one to be captain out of our little group. And I was actually going through my command assessment training and I remember very vividly a training captain saying to I was coming back in to land that stands it one day and I said, gosh, I'm so tired just late at night. And this training captain said to me Emma, you're always tired, are you okay? And I was like, yeah, I'm fine. Of course I'm fine, I'm just busy. Job Hours drive to work every day and hours drive home. Kids in Scotland living in England. It's just busy. And I didn't really notice that this kind of fatigue was creeping up on me. But actually it was more than that. I started to then get a dull ache in my right arm and again I just saw that because I'm lifting heavy manuals from the right hand side of my seat, although I could explain everything that was happening. And then I played a lot of tennis. I went running every day and I fell over playing tennis one day and we all laughed because I liked to clown around a bit. But actually, when that happens for third or fourth time, one of my friends said to me you know, emma, that's happening quite a lot, are you okay? And I said, yeah, I think so. I'm fine, I'm just clumsy. Just, maybe my shoelaces were tied up properly. But actually I started to notice things like washing my hair. I couldn't hold my hands up, I couldn't hold my arms up for long enough to rub the shampoo into my hair and I thought that is a bit weird actually. And running I would suddenly get to a point where I would just cramp up. So I thought, okay, there's definitely something going on here. And all this time I was still flying because I thought if I don't fly, easy jet will fail. If I'm not there, the airline won't work anymore, which is ridiculous. But at the time my entire focus was I need to get command, I need to get through that process. So I went to see the doctor in a six month process of investigations that began, and during that time I basically got weaker and I ended up seeing the doctor one day after I had been flying and she said, yeah, I'm going to refer you to a neurologist. And I said to her do you think I've got multiple sclerosis? Because the symptoms were very similar. And she said, yeah, I want you to see a neurologist. Thought that's doctor speak for. Yes, I think you have, but I don't want to say that out loud. So that was when I lost my medical. I was stood down from flying, I knew I had six months that I could spend on full pay and getting better, finding out what was wrong assuming that was going to happen. But I was worried and I had to have an interview with my base captain the next day to explain what had happened. So I drove over to work and said to him look, I think we need to accept the fact that I may not come back, because I could see a future in a wheelchair, basically. And he was great. And he said to me Emma, when you come back, you're going to go into the command process again and you'll just pick up where you left off. And he was very adamant to say when, not if. So we did my command interview, then we did my exit interview and then I was gone and during that time I had more tests and nobody could really find out exactly what was wrong with me. But I was sent to see a Navy Lieutenant Commander who is a specialist he's the guy that all air crew go to if they've got any neurological problems and he said no, it's not multiple cirrhosis. He did some more tests and he finally diagnosed me as having something called acquired idiopathic demyelinating polyneuropathy. For any of you medical fans out there, it basically meant we called it Jenny legs, because it basically meant my big muscles in my arms and legs were being attacked by an autoimmune trigadillus and there was scarring on West Binal cord and that was what was causing this paralysis. So I was very lucky because he picked it up and he knew that there was a treatment for it. And a few weeks later he had called me up to say this treatment needs to be approved by the drugs board of the hospital. How are you feeling? I'm expecting this to happen in September. I said yeah, you know, last week I was feeling really good, but this week I really feel terrible and he said you're in on Monday and he whisked me into hospital and put me. I went on to a drip or something called immunoglobulin, which is a byproduct of blood and that shut down my immune system and it cured me and literally four days in I was sitting in this hospital bed and I remember very distinctly my husband was with me and I had to go to the loo in a wheelchair. They wouldn't let me walk and I came out of the loo and I thought do you know I feel so much better. It was like this folk lifting and I really went from strength to strength. I basically was cured, I recovered. I was told by the neurologist that I had the fitness level of a newborn baby. All my fitness had gone, basically. And he said you really need to take it easy getting back into exercise and I thought you really don't know if it's all to you and I didn't really believe him. But I had been swimming a kilometer every day prior to this.

Speaker 2: 28:32

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:33

Went back swimming for the first time and I couldn't even swim a length. That's how much fitness I had lost. But my arms, like your muscles were, really just had no energy, absolutely no energy. So I could move my arms but I just would get halfway down a length of the swimming pool and I just think now I can't do this now and I had to really build that back up. I did throw myself back into exercise because I wanted to prove that I was still a human being. I lost my sense of identity because we had moved house. My husband had been moved to a different base, so I moved into this new house where my children were at boarding school. So I was a mother that didn't have children with her. I was a pilot by profession but I wasn't flying at the moment because I was off sick. I was a previously fit and healthy, tennis playing, running, sporty woman who couldn't even walk down the street and it was really difficult because I just thought who am I? What do I exist for? So I had to really battle with that and I was very lucky to meet a great group of friends in the Militia, wives Choir, who became sisters, really more than friends, and they got me through that. We all supported each other through all sorts of things Life happens all around us, doesn't it? And we got each other through those situations and they got me through this and I did make a full recovery. But I was quite stupid because I then threw myself back into exercise. I cycled the Buckingham Palace to Windsor Castle Palace to Palace Bike Ride, which I managed, but with no training. I then agreed to cycle from Waterloo Station in London to Waterloo in Belgium for charity, which is 300 miles, and I hadn't trained for it. So ultimately, my back in the end just said you know what I don't like this? And I started to ignore. I hadn't learned my lesson, I hadn't listened to my body. The first time I still wasn't listening to my body and I didn't slow down. I went back to work and threw myself back into my command course because I thought I've got to get back to work and I've got to get command. I was so focused on it, my back was agony, I was struggling to walk and in the middle of one of my simulator sessions which is how they assess you to see whether you're fit to command I basically had this incredible pain and the next morning I couldn't even move. It took me an hour to try and get down the stairs into the breakfast room and my instructor from the night before had noticed there was something wrong and I actually phoned him and said I can't come to work today. And I ended up back in hospital because I'd slipped three discs simultaneously. And that was it. I was off the course and I should have at that point made the strong leadership command decision which would have been to say don't put me back on this course, I will come back and do a command course in the future when my back is sorted. What I did instead was, once again, I was off work with my back because I couldn't move. As soon as my back was sorted and I was able to move around freely which fortunately was actually not didn't take too long I went back in to finish off the rest of the course. But by that time the momentum had been lost because all of my coursemates had gone on to finish their courses and do their line training and they were starting to become captains and I was just there on my own and I had real first officers rather than my trainee colleague with me, who I had got to know quite well. So I was trying to play catch up and ultimately I went into the sim at 10 o'clock at night for my final simulator check before I would be released to fly and I failed. And I knew about halfway through the sim that I wasn't doing very well and I thought I've just got to try and salvage as much of this as possible. But I sat at two o'clock in the morning in the debriefing room with the instructor, who was also a friend and it was awful for him because he and I knew each other quite well and he said I'm really sorry, emma, but I can't pass you. And I said I know you can't. I thought it was rubbish. And so we debriefed and talked about the things that I'd got role and the things I could have done better. And I was able to really debrief him because I knew the things I should have done. And I just remember driving home at three o'clock in the morning with tears rolling down my face thinking that's it, I've just failed the biggest challenge of my life. And it was horrible, it was just. It was bewilderingly difficult to accept that at the age of I think I was 41 or 42, I just failed for the first time in my life, something that was so important and I went to freefall, were you also thinking, oh my God, I've had such a tough time.

Speaker 2: 33:32

Health hasn't been going. I really worked, I persevered, and it's still not a good outcome Such a lull right. But I know that you doped yourself out of it, so please go on.

Speaker 1: 33:46

Well, you have to. Initially I got home and I got sympathy from my husband. I got some sympathy for my children, but then they made a puppy. I was like, yeah, that could help. And for quite a long time after that happened I thought this must be a sign from God. I haven't been listening. I just felt broken, to be honest with you, not just broken, I felt like I'd been dashed against the rocks and it was all my own doing. So that's even worse. And I could have turned around and said to the company oh, you shouldn't have given me that failure, and it shouldn't have been that time of night and this shouldn't have happened and that shouldn't have happened. But actually that was rubbish. This is a company I wanted to carry on working for. It was really important to me that I handled it in the right way. So my initial reaction was I shall never fly again. And then I thought obviously I'm going to keep flying, but I'm not going to go back to easy jet. I'm going to fly for another company because it would have been really easy to get a job with someone else saying I'm a failed captain. Would you like me to fly to you? I'm like, no, thank you. Eventually, I realized that the only way forward was to pick myself up and dust myself down and choose to put a smile on my face and go back to work and halt my head high, because that's the only way you can deal with it. And that's exactly what I did. I went back into the crew room. I had to return to the right-hand seat and as soon as you start a command course, you're no longer qualified to fly in the right-hand seat, so you have to be retrained back into that role. So of course, I'm standing at the briefing table with three stripes on my arm because I'm a senior first officer by this point and standing there with a training captain because he's training me back into the right-hand seat, and everybody who doesn't know what's happened keeps coming up to the table and saying oh, congratulations. You must be so chuffed because everyone thought that I had passed my command and I was doing my command line training. So nobody knew and even though I was dying inside, I just put a smile on my face and said, yeah, I didn't quite make it this time. So I'm going to go back in the right-hand seat for a bit and you can see the looks on people's faces, so obviously oh no, I just saw the wrong thing and yeah, and that was down to me to make them not feel bad because they didn't know. They know they weren't saying that to be spiteful, so I just did what I thought was the right thing, which was to deal with it with as much grace as possible. It was not a bad thing for me to become a little bit more humble. I'd already had this miraculous recovery from this horrible illness that had given me a second chance at life, and now I was being taught to be humble with what I had left and I took that lesson on board really seriously and made sure that I made the most of the next year that I spent in the right-hand seat so that the next time I went for command I was going to get it right and I was going to become a fumble-wall captain that was grateful for the position they were in, but equally still a strong leader, and I'd spent a year learning how to do that basically, and everybody was very kind and understanding and I was very well supported fabulous people who would do that training process, and a lot of people don't talk about failure because I think they think it's so too much of a sign of weakness. But you know what? I was a much better captain in the long run than I ever would have been if I'd have passed the first time, because I did understand what it was like to not pass and not be successful and I didn't assume anything. I couldn't assume it was going to be handed to me on a plate. It was something I had had to work really hard for. When I finally passed my final command line check, having done the course the second time so much better the second time because I was in a completely different place I really felt like I'd earned that fourth stripe when I got it. So I'm sorry.

Speaker 2: 37:36

I want that story and I was just thinking as you were showing your story.

Speaker 1: 37:40

I bet she was a much better captain after this than even if she'd got a bit of a stroke of heart and so glad that you said that, and I don't know if I would have been arrogant, or maybe I don't know what sort of captain I would have been. I just felt like I appreciated it more because I'd had to work harder for it.

Speaker 2: 37:58

I just feel, emma, and I'm realizing more and more, that the harder the journey, I think you just appreciate what you get at the end and it makes you so much of a knob that you're a terrible person or leader before, but just evolves you so much more than if you hadn't gone through that trajectory.

Speaker 1: 38:18

Well, definitely, and actually I don't know if I was a very nice person or not really I don't think I was a horrible person but I definitely think I became more empathetic and more understanding of what we all talk about now, about being kind and understanding. For example, if a colleague's failing at work, is it because they're failing at work or is it because there's something going on that they really need to talk about, but they don't know how to bring it up? Yeah, so it's just like understanding that everybody carries baggage with them. I had my own baggage to carry and I had to learn how to carry it, but I also had to learn really importantly and I think we're all really bad at this is that if your body is shouting at you, listen to your body when it whispers so that it doesn't have to scream is a great saying I heard recently. It taught me, and it taught me just to be kind. Maybe I wasn't as kind before as I was afterwards. I certainly felt like that second chance at life and that second chance at command changed my life profoundly, Definitely.

Speaker 2: 39:23

You said something really good there about kindness, but I think it's probably starting with being kind to yourself and I think you were really pushing yourself because you had this goal that you had set for yourself within this timeline and I think the journey for me, it seems like you really started being kinder with yourself first as well, and taking care of yourself, definitely.

Speaker 1: 39:48

Thanks. Even now I have to remind myself to say no sometimes, because I think women particularly do this, that we think we can do it all. Don't worry, I'll do that, I'll do the kids and I'll do that on my way to work. Of course I'll do this. And actually it's not okay to rush through your day and grab a packet of crisps or a twix for lunch because you're not making time to sit down and eat properly. That's not okay. It's not healthy to rush through life all the time. I just rush to work and rush up to school to see the kids and rush through command and get it all now, do it all now. But actually somebody pointed out to me that even if I had got command the first time round, I was only in my early 40s. You don't retire well pre-COVID. You don't retire until 65 in the airlines. That's still more than 20 years sitting in an elliptical seat. Actually it's a lot of responsibility to carry for a long time and some people are getting command in their late 20s. They've got up to 40 years of all that responsibility and I just think slow down and smell the dazies sometimes.

Speaker 2: 40:59

From airline captain to starting your own charity organization. There's a huge thing called COVID that happened as well. That influenced it in a huge way. Can you share that journey, emma, leaving the rest and then starting this on your own?

Speaker 1: 41:20

Well, that all happened because of COVID, really. So in 2019, I'd had this rock star year, basically because I had moved to Gatwick. We had moved our family home back up to the north of Scotland to the house I'm in now, which is a house we built 22 years ago. So we moved home. I was commuting to Gatwick. I'd been asked to appear in an ITV documentary called Inside the Cockpit, which I loved. I had a film crew following me around for six months, which I just really loved, so I'd been asked to be in this documentary. The airline had a really great year and was expected. 2020 was seen by everybody as being a really it was going to be a great year for aviation. That was the anticipation. So, as this wave of success going into 2020, and I'd just gone down to 75% part time as well, so I had more time at home I'd moved to Gatwick so I could get night stopping flights so that I could come home in my working week as well. And then, obviously, covid happened. 2020 was just a disaster, but I could see flying around in end of February, beginning of March 2020. We were told that this thing was spreading across the world like this sort of black shadow and at the same time in the UK we were being told the NHS was about to face its biggest challenge yet, and I felt really strongly two things. Firstly, I didn't think this was going to go away quickly because I knew that we were going to be grounded and I just had a feeling that this was going to be a long time, that this was going to take to recover. So I knew there was a big problem coming for us as aircrew, but I also knew that the NHS needed help and there's a skill set that we have as pilots that works perfectly in a medical setting Actually, it worked perfectly in a business setting as well. For the medical setting, I could see that there was a way that aircrew was suddenly going to become available. The NHS needed support and I was a peer support mentor at my airline and I mentioned this to the psychologist that oversaw the program and he introduced me to somebody that had been having similar ideas and the two of us met on the phone. We had a phone call and had put this idea together, which was that a uniformed aircrew would go into NHS hospitals and go into a space where NHS staff could go. That wasn't a ward, was different from the places they were working and they would be welcomed a bit like they would be welcomed onto an aircraft and they would be offered a cup of tea or coffee and a biscuit and a chat. So it was tea and empathy. Basically, just come and take the weight off your feet, come and talk about whatever's bothering you. Today we had this phone conversation and three weeks later we opened our first lounge at the Whippetington Hospital in London in middle of March 2020. And I had put this call out because I had this presence in my airline and people knew me. I'd been around for a while, so I knew a lot of people from either university or from University Air Squadron, or from places we'd lived, or from my airline or from my flight training days. And I just put the message out on every social media platform I had access to. So it would either be workplace in my airline or it was on Facebook or LinkedIn or wherever. And we had 700 people signed up to help in the first three days and by summer 2020, we had six and a half thousand uniformed crew across the country going into hospitals, 104 hospital lounges across all four nations of the United Kingdom. We had two lounges in New York City as well, and even crew that weren't based in the UK or weren't from UK Airlines. We had American Airlines and we had people from Emirates and we had people from Qantas, you name it. We had people from all over the globe who were London based, crew particularly, who were supporting us and they said, yeah, I'll do it, because, of course, aircrew like to be needed and this is a great way to. It's built an aircrew community, but it's also supported NHS staff and we were very careful not to try and take over from systems that already exist in the NHS, but we described ourselves as wrapping a warm blanket of care around the NHS when it was out in the cold.

Speaker 2: 45:44

And obviously the reception from NHS staff was very good because the Londoners grew.

Speaker 1: 45:49

Absolutely. So we're still running now. So we've changed the way that we work because hospitals needed their spaces back. So we now have converted double decker buses that are mobile wellbeing lounges that we take to hospitals across the country, but we still do the same. They look so cool, they're awesome, they're just fabulous spaces because the roofs are raised per specs roofs so you can stand up upstairs and they let so much light in. But they also have tub chairs that are fitted. We have massage chairs on board and we have air conditioning and heating for the winter and big TV and foot massages. So you basically come and take the weight off your feet and it's time that somebody else is looking after you. So for them to come into a lounge and be looked after by us is a real treat for them and a real privilege for us.

Speaker 2: 46:41

That's awesome. It's just, it's such a small idea and such a simple gesture almost right it can have such a huge impact, obviously has had such a huge impact and because of the impact, is just grown. So it's just amazing. And kudos to you and your co-founder, for I'm sure you've heard a few laws along the way or maybe some uncertainty along the way, but just to keep going.

Speaker 1: 47:09

Well, yeah, and we basically we started off running the charity. I mean, the charity was always set up on Zoom, so I didn't meet a lot of the people that ran, were working in the hospitals and has but done a lot of the running the charity. I didn't fly from March 2020, when I came home for days off and never returned to Gatwick, not knowing that I would never operate a commercial airline flight Breezy Jet again. The amazing thing really is the sense of community that we created for our aircrew friends, because obviously, at the time as well, airlines were either sacking people or making people redundant or throwing people or people were choosing to leave. It's just been a privilege to have been able to be in a position where I could start something like that, but it's even more of a privilege and all that to be continuing to run the charity and continuing to carry out that work within HS staff who arguably probably need the support more now than they ever did before, because the adrenaline's worn off and everyone's tired struggling.

Speaker 2: 48:13

So that takes me to the next question what's next with Project Bingman Plus also? I know there have been some big announcements recently, so what's next in your journey?

Speaker 1: 48:26

Well, so I'm CEO of the charity and I'm paid two days a week to run the charity at the moment, and the charity will continue to run for as long as there's a need, which we think will be forever, as long as there's the people to run it and as long as there's the money to fund it. I think that's my job is to make sure that the people and the money are there, and we're doing our best to make sure that continues to happen. It's challenging times but, yeah, you don't give up just because it's challenging. And we set the whole charity up based on field of dreams. We said if we build it, they will come, kind of thing, and we just believed all the time that if we were doing the right thing, then the money would come or the jobs would come in or whatever. So I still believe that If at any point I believe that the charity has run its course, I won't hesitate to wind it up and say, okay, we reached an end, go now. But none of us believe that we're there. We think there's a lot we can do and a lot we can grow. So obviously, wingman is very much on the horizon for me. Certainly in the next few years. I'm probably not going to go back to flying again. I think I have thought about it quite a lot, but I feel like I've kind of achieved everything that I needed to achieve. I don't need to prove myself to anyone. I'll always be a pilot, in the same way that a lot of Air Force pilots don't fly from their fraughties and they're still referred to as pilots. I don't know if it's a world I'll go back to, because I think I've moved on from it and I think I like where I'm at now. I work also as a motivational speaker and leadership coach. I do a lot of work with business, taking those transferable skills from the flight deck into business to deliver things like decision making models that are really useful and give meaningful kind of impact in a workplace and produce better outcomes, and also create teams where leadership is understood as something that is about the people that are being led rather than about the KPIs that have got to be met or whatever. So it's about people led leadership, and so I've written a book that I'm looking for a publisher for. So that's something that is on the horizon as well. And I've recently been appointed to the advisory board of a new airline that's being set up, which is very exciting, that's called Global Airlines and that's going to start operating out of Gatwick next year, in 2024. So there's lots of exciting things on the horizon, but I don't take anything for granted. I think that I'm very aware of the fact that in the past, I was only as good as my last landing or my last medical or my last simulator check. Covid has taught all of us that nothing's guaranteed in life anymore, and so it's just about being open to new opportunities and open to new ideas and being flexible and adaptable and finding opportunities wherever I can to obviously create work for myself, but the bigger thing really is to leave this world better than when I found it, and that's really important to me that whatever difference I'm making is really only in the small corner of the world that I inhabit. But if I'm making a difference in a positive way for the people that I come into contact with, then literally my work here is done, and I won't stop doing that until my work here literally is done.

Speaker 2: 52:02

Just brilliant. What a journey, emma, and I'm just looking forward to all the other things that's yet to come. But before I let you go, I have to ask you something. I asked each of my guests what would be the theme? I know you're rewriting a book. If you were to have a theme song or a book title for yourself and to describe your journey and where you are today, what would it be?

Speaker 1: 52:24

I think that the best way to describe my journey to be honest with you would be the Chumble Whomper song. I get knocked down Because every time something's come my way that's been a challenge. I've just dealt with it and seen it as opportunity, or I haven't allowed things to keep me down. So there's loads of songs I could have chosen, but I really think that that's the best one. To sum up, the way that I've just I don't let things get the better of me, which is not the same thing as saying I never get upset or I never feel down or I never have blue days or whatever. It's just that I choose to take a course of action that is going to get me through, whatever that thing is, and it might be that course of action is to reach out and say I need help. It might not necessarily be that I could fix something, so that would be my theme tune. I love the song, by the way. It's a great song, isn't it? Yeah?

Speaker 2: 53:23

A really good book actually.

Speaker 1: 53:26

I always think my book would be everybody's always said this if they wrote Bridget Jones about a now 50 year old married person, it would be about me. I've never made blue suit, I've never used blue string to make blue suit, but I am the sort of person who will quite unwittingly say, yes, I can ski, and then end up not being able to ski. You know, I tend to be that person who, if I do something to show off, it's always going to be, it's always going to go wrong. So but the working title of my actual book is called Folding my Wings and that's about my journey and about what's happened since COVID. So I'm hoping that I can get that over the line and get that published very soon.

Speaker 2: 54:19

Can't wait to get my copy.

Speaker 1: 54:22

I can email you a version. It needs editing.

Speaker 2: 54:28

Emma, thank you so much for your time. I know you have a lot on your schedule, so thank you so much for coming on Unlimited Seating and sharing your journey with us.

Speaker 1: 54:37

It's my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting me, and it's always such a pleasure to talk to you Likewise.

Speaker 2: 55:16

Thank you.