“This is your captain speaking. We are currently cruising at 30,000 feet and shortly the cabin staff will begin serving drinks.”

How many times have you heard words like those, and yearned to be saying them yourself? Doesn’t the cool, calm, and collected tone of your captain’s voice instill a certain sense of security and well-being, that must make even the most nervous, and phobic, of flyers rest easy?

“Due to strong head winds on the in-bound leg we now expect to be outside the terminal at 10:30pm rather than 9:30pm.” Or, “Take off this afternoon has been slightly delayed while we await the final off sign of our departure paperwork.”

See, it’s always someone else’s fault, never yours! The job’s all spin, isn’t it? Even I could do that. I bet elocution lessons are part of “flight” training, and as captain, you are probably given a book containing all the lines you’ll ever need to calm and reassure your patients passengers.

I once wanted to be an airline pilot. I once believed (still do, actually) there was a certain… romance in air travel. Of late night departures, taxying along runways guided only by the edge lights, and watching as the glow of the city far below vanishes into the darkness.

And what did you say was required to become a pilot? A good voice?

Unfortunately though, those of us who think we can talk our way into, and through, a job like this have something else coming. A pyramid like structure, that’s what.

At the bottom of this “pyramid” is a single engine Cessna aircraft. Pretty easy to fly, I’ve even done it myself. A four engine Boeing 747, located at the top of the pyramid, is another matter though.

And no, the control tower could not talk a novice through landing one of those babies if the pilot became incapacitated, as Hollywood script writers would have us believe.

So make that an inverted pyramid structure, where working your way to the top involves travelling a path that, when viewed from the ground looking up, is above your head, not below your feet. And unless you are a fly (no pun intended) with sticky, feet you are more than likely to fall should you take a wrong step.

And, sadly, a good bedside manner just isn’t enough to reach the top.

But would you really want to get to the top? This is literally a job that requires travel, and being thousands of miles from home on Christmas day, your kids birthdays, and at the weekend. You don’t clock in at 9am, or run for the bus at 5pm, in this kind of gig either.

There’s jet-lag, fast turn arounds, and while there are exotic locations aplenty, there’s no time to see them. And if you thought an office cubicle was constricted trying spending the duration of a 24 hour flight in the confines of a cockpit.

You won’t find me there, I’ll be in economy (unless I can fluke an upgrade), sipping wine and watching Casablanca on the in-flight movie channel. Now there’s air travel romance for you.