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As a lot of people, I wanted to be a pilot as long as I can remember.
So I had all the corresponding hobbies that led up to the moment where I
actually was allowed to pull 82 tons of aluminium and steel of the runway.
When I was 17 years old I applied at the Royal Dutch Airforce, I wanted to
become a F-16 Jockey.
I was admitted to the tests and after about a day I was on the train home
again with a little note stating I should probably come back in about 2 years,
because they thought I wasn't mature enough.
So, no probs, I went back to school and after about a year I applied at
the RLS (Rijks Luchtvaart School), this was a school that was run and paid for
by the government and which trained pilots for the KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines).
Again I entered the testing period, which spanned a total of about 1 year, and
was rejected after about 6 months after having failed a multitasking test behind
a computer.
Damn I thought, but no probs still, I went back to school and after having
waited for 2 years (I was 19 now) I applied again at the Royal Dutch Airforce
and was admitted into the testing-fase again.
And voila, out of a group of 8 I and a 17-year old girl made it through the
first fase.
But then came a bio-metric examination and it turned out that legs were just 2
cm too long.
And get this, not for the F-16, but for the Pilatus PC-7, the plane you train
in.
So then I thought, ok whatever you guys want, if I can't fly em, I'll
build em.
I did another two years of school and was then accepted into the Harlem
Polytechnic (The Netherlands ofcourse) where I studied Aeronautical Engineering
for 5 years.
In my 5th year I decided that I would give becoming a pilot one
more try and I applied at the KLS (KLM Flight Academy) previously known as the
RLS.
The testing-fase took about a year, and what do ya know, I made it and was
immediately offered a contract for the KLM which stated that after I finished
the school I would be flying for the KLM starting as cruise-relieve-pilot on a
Boeing 747-400.
After I got my Aeronautical Engineering degree, I went to study at the KLS
(I was 26 by now).
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