James Oates

Nineteen year-old James Oates developed his interest in aviation through watching air crash investigation videos on YouTube. A long-haul flight to Tokyo with the Scouts in 2015, plus numerous holiday trips by airline, sealed his passion to be a pilot.

A Levels completed, he is now six months into ground school training, along with seven other ab initio students at Leading Edge Aviation at London Oxford Airport. “I’m looking forward to getting airborne again,” he told Resilient Aviation. GA flying is opening up on 4th July (see related story), but he doesn’t have a date yet for when the flying phase of the course starts.

Next week James is moving back to his digs at the Harcourt Court campus at Oxford Brookes University, as he readies to start exams in a week’s time in Coventry. Home, for his parents and grandparents, is a stone’s throw from Shoreham, Brighton City Airport. “They’ve all come out to the garden to wave as I’ve flown past.”

James is now six months into ground school training, along with seven other ab initio students at Leading Edge Aviation at London Oxford Airport.

James is comfortable and relaxed at Leading Edge Aviation. It offers extensive classroom facilities and has a young training fleet of Diamond DA40s, and twin-engined DA42s for its students. “It’s a young school (started in 2018) and they’ve been amazing so far. They always put the students first and as ground school students, we didn’t incur any delays during the lockdown. Moving training to online has meant we’ve kept moving forward, using Microsoft Teams.”

“Oxford Airport is great too, close to larger controlled airspace which presents excellent challenges to help prepare us cadets for the commercial airline world.”

James opted for a fully integrated course, unsponsored, known as a ‘white tail’ flexible course. A sensible decision, because when he finishes in just over a year’s time as a qualified commercial pilot he will be able to approach any airline for work.

He is concerned about the lay-offs and redundancies being made by the commercial airlines currently, a direct result of the pandemic - the worse crisis ever to affect aviation. “While this is upsetting, I do think many older pilots will elect to take retirement,” he suggests, agreeing there will be a trend for airlines to turn to (cheaper) younger pilots.

James complements his pilot training with professional aviation photography shared on social media. Within three years he has built up a solid Instagram following of over 79,000 followers. SpeedBirdUK. (His favourite commercial airliner is the MD11.)

“I didn’t really expect it to take off like it did, running it as a hobby alongside my school work, but I’m pleased at how it has evolved. I have had many fantastic opportunities in the industry through my work as a photographer and social media influencer, my most notable being able to cover the Qatar Airways’ A350-1000 delivery flight at 16 years old.”

James is open about his future. “To be honest I’d enjoy any flying job at the moment, given the current state of the aviation industry. Flying commercially in the UK would be great, but equally I’d be happy to work abroad. I like easyJet, flying them regularly on holiday and I admire their crew. A strong legacy airline like British Airways, eventually, would be great.

Echoing the sentiment of many in the industry, James would like to see VAT removed from pilot training. “I didn’t choose to fly for the money, but training is very costly and the abolition of VAT would make such a big difference for many cadets. I hope the Government will make that call, he concludes.

BlueSky Business Aviation News | 2nd July 2020 | Issue #564

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