About Michael
I am a dual national living in Arizona, where I am based at the regional airline I currently work for. Having grown up in Switzerland has given me a unique perspective on differences between U.S. and European methods of aeronautical education, specifically in the areas of flying and engineering.
I am a member of the Order of the Engineer and a lifetime member of the National Geographic Society.
I started my bachelor degree in aeronautical science, but it quickly became apparent that the classes were too easy, the degree was basically a professional pilot degree and that you don’t need a degree to become a professional pilot. So I switched to aerospace engineering. Suffice to say, my grades did not shine as bright after that first semester. I attempted to double major for my 2nd semester there, however my advisors told me that my time would be better spent on doing a flight minor instead. I spent nearly every summer flying, as the university had discounts for flight students during that time to entice them to stay behind for flight. Northern Arizona summers aren’t as hot as those down in the valley, however we did have monsoon rains nearly every afternoon. I took extra classes as well to avoid falling behind, since I “wasted” one semester as a pilot instead of going straight to engineering.
During the summer of my senior year, I participated in the study abroad program in Brazil to complete a couple of electives, one of them being a technical elective for which my team studied how cloud formation and weather indices affected tropical storm prediction, and a humanities elective about the human impact of modernization and mechanization on wildlife and the Amazon rainforest.
I dropped the flight minor before the start of the last semester because I found out that I wouldn’t be able to get my commercial single-engine pilot license (CPL) with the school due to the way they framed the curriculum. The FAA approved flight course was set up to require CPL students to complete the complex endorsement (flight with a constant speed propeller, retractable landing gear and variable flaps) by completing the multi-engine portion as well. Not only would that delay my return to Switzerland but I would have to pay nearly $400/hour to complete the license! Suffice to say I was pretty frustrated with it all. The U.S. may be the land of the free, but anything worthwhile here is anything but!
The highlight of my senior year is probably the success my team and I had with our year-long capstone project. We had to design, build and fly a fixed-wing unmanned aerial system (UAS). The requirements included being capable of a 4 hour loiter on a surveillance target, completely run on electric power, and be able to be taken down in under 30 minutes and fit in a 6ft by 3ft by 3ft box or container.
I got started with going through service selection in February to determine which branch I would be serving. Thanks to the SPHAIR military recommendation, I was able to go straight to the Air Force with no questions asked. I received my marching orders to get started for March of 2015. The first 7 weeks are the same for every able-bodied Swiss male over the age of 18, which is simply basic training (shooting, first aid, military culture, etc). One thing that struck me is the systematic cleaning every morning and evening.
After the first 7 weeks, some of us had to be recruited to be sergeants. Because of the mandatory nature of the Swiss army, there aren’t many people who voluntarily sign up to do this unless they are motivated to become officers later on, which I was. The superior officers were happy they didn’t have to convince me to sign up.
The Air Force officer selection though was another story. Contrary to the U.S. where all you need to sign up to become a commissioned officer is a bachelor’s degree and U.S. citizenship, in Switzerland everyone starts as a conscript, the idea being that if you don’t know how it felt to receive orders, how can you possibly be qualified to give them?
The selection test was quite challenging. It started around 8pm with a psychological test, followed by a 5k run (with your gear, of course), followed by a series of written tests of math, geographical knowledge and logic, each separated by another 5k run. The testers also ran songs during the written portions of the selection designed to either make you fall asleep or distract you from the test. The final written test was another psychological test, which I was able to finish around 1am. We were told they were going to compare them to see how we prevailed under stress. Needless to say, those who fell asleep during the written portions were automatically eliminated.
Officer school was possibly the best school of life I ever attended. This is my advice for any military-aged Swiss out there (whether living in Switzerland or abroad): if you don’t want to go the military, go or stay abroad until you’re too old to be conscripted. If you want to go to the military, come to Switzerland and work your way into becoming an officer. You get as close to personalized training as you can possibly get. They will teach you about how to organize troops, food, supplies, what kind of gear to plan for, military organization and they will even send you for a week at sport training. Yes, sport training, where you become a military sport instructor at the same facilities the Swiss Olympic teams train at. You get a bicycle, and you’re sent all around the Swiss countryside for both military history lessons as well as outdoor shooting lessons. You also become a shooting instructor since your first few months as a military officer you have to train recruits on how to shoot.
However, all my military pilot hopes came to a grinding halt as I was eliminated from the next selection process. In the south of Switzerland, I went through the PC-7 simulator selection, and I was one of the 3 out of 5 who didn’t pass. The feedback from my debriefing was that I had too many preconceptions of how to fly and didn’t improve my flying between sim sessions as much as the other candidates. Which ties into the reality of flying in Europe: airlines and other companies much prefer ab-initio training where they get to mold their perfect employees to do just the way they want them to do things, which is also not the way I learned how to fly in the U.S.
So I spent a few months unemployed until I got a job at a local university as a UAS researcher and student project supervisor regarding UAS. The professor who hired me was very enthusiastic to have found an aerospace engineering specialist, considering that that degree is not available anywhere in Switzerland. I worked at the university in Switzerland for 8 months, but advancement in the field would have been impossible anywhere in Europe without a master’s degree, which pretty much everyone in academia had, at a minimum. And so there I was, working and flying drones, which was great but I still wanted to fly manned aircraft and I didn’t see how I was going to do that with less than 300 hours of total flying time with an FAA license in Switzerland. Naturally, I had to go back to where I could do just that.
And, in 2017, I was back! The first thing I needed to do was to get a flight review to get myself up-to-date with flying the U.S. Then, I completed the multi-engine CPL, and applied to any job I could find, which weren’t many. Nearly every job wanted experienced pilots (meaning over 700 hours), or didn’t pay a living wage. However I did find that nearly every flight school was looking for certified flight instructors (CFI), so I went and got the license. One thing led to another and I was back to my alma mater, only this time as an employed flight instructor.
For the following 2 years I worked to getting my 1500 hours that airlines required, and as a bonus, the flight school paid for my CFII (instrument instructor), and I was able to get my master of science degree in unmanned systems for free! That, combined with my aerospace engineering degree, gives me a solid plan B if ever something goes wrong in the future: I can always drop everything and zoom straight back to Switzerland and create a drone or UAS startup.
In any case, regional airlines were hiring like crazy. The aviation sector was growing at such a fast pace they actually had to hike wages to attract newly qualified pilots, which suited me just fine. After carefully reviewing all 5 job offers I had, I didn’t go where they were throwing the most money, but I chose the airline with the best reputation in terms of training and stability during troubled times. I happened to make a passing comment to a coworker once that aviation seems to take a really bad downturn every 10 years or so (9/11 attacks, 2008 financial crisis) and we’re probably overdue for the next one so we’d better get going asap.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I am a member of the Order of the Engineer and a lifetime member of the National Geographic Society.
I started my bachelor degree in aeronautical science, but it quickly became apparent that the classes were too easy, the degree was basically a professional pilot degree and that you don’t need a degree to become a professional pilot. So I switched to aerospace engineering. Suffice to say, my grades did not shine as bright after that first semester. I attempted to double major for my 2nd semester there, however my advisors told me that my time would be better spent on doing a flight minor instead. I spent nearly every summer flying, as the university had discounts for flight students during that time to entice them to stay behind for flight. Northern Arizona summers aren’t as hot as those down in the valley, however we did have monsoon rains nearly every afternoon. I took extra classes as well to avoid falling behind, since I “wasted” one semester as a pilot instead of going straight to engineering.
During the summer of my senior year, I participated in the study abroad program in Brazil to complete a couple of electives, one of them being a technical elective for which my team studied how cloud formation and weather indices affected tropical storm prediction, and a humanities elective about the human impact of modernization and mechanization on wildlife and the Amazon rainforest.
I dropped the flight minor before the start of the last semester because I found out that I wouldn’t be able to get my commercial single-engine pilot license (CPL) with the school due to the way they framed the curriculum. The FAA approved flight course was set up to require CPL students to complete the complex endorsement (flight with a constant speed propeller, retractable landing gear and variable flaps) by completing the multi-engine portion as well. Not only would that delay my return to Switzerland but I would have to pay nearly $400/hour to complete the license! Suffice to say I was pretty frustrated with it all. The U.S. may be the land of the free, but anything worthwhile here is anything but!
The highlight of my senior year is probably the success my team and I had with our year-long capstone project. We had to design, build and fly a fixed-wing unmanned aerial system (UAS). The requirements included being capable of a 4 hour loiter on a surveillance target, completely run on electric power, and be able to be taken down in under 30 minutes and fit in a 6ft by 3ft by 3ft box or container.
I got started with going through service selection in February to determine which branch I would be serving. Thanks to the SPHAIR military recommendation, I was able to go straight to the Air Force with no questions asked. I received my marching orders to get started for March of 2015. The first 7 weeks are the same for every able-bodied Swiss male over the age of 18, which is simply basic training (shooting, first aid, military culture, etc). One thing that struck me is the systematic cleaning every morning and evening.
After the first 7 weeks, some of us had to be recruited to be sergeants. Because of the mandatory nature of the Swiss army, there aren’t many people who voluntarily sign up to do this unless they are motivated to become officers later on, which I was. The superior officers were happy they didn’t have to convince me to sign up.
The Air Force officer selection though was another story. Contrary to the U.S. where all you need to sign up to become a commissioned officer is a bachelor’s degree and U.S. citizenship, in Switzerland everyone starts as a conscript, the idea being that if you don’t know how it felt to receive orders, how can you possibly be qualified to give them?
The selection test was quite challenging. It started around 8pm with a psychological test, followed by a 5k run (with your gear, of course), followed by a series of written tests of math, geographical knowledge and logic, each separated by another 5k run. The testers also ran songs during the written portions of the selection designed to either make you fall asleep or distract you from the test. The final written test was another psychological test, which I was able to finish around 1am. We were told they were going to compare them to see how we prevailed under stress. Needless to say, those who fell asleep during the written portions were automatically eliminated.
Officer school was possibly the best school of life I ever attended. This is my advice for any military-aged Swiss out there (whether living in Switzerland or abroad): if you don’t want to go the military, go or stay abroad until you’re too old to be conscripted. If you want to go to the military, come to Switzerland and work your way into becoming an officer. You get as close to personalized training as you can possibly get. They will teach you about how to organize troops, food, supplies, what kind of gear to plan for, military organization and they will even send you for a week at sport training. Yes, sport training, where you become a military sport instructor at the same facilities the Swiss Olympic teams train at. You get a bicycle, and you’re sent all around the Swiss countryside for both military history lessons as well as outdoor shooting lessons. You also become a shooting instructor since your first few months as a military officer you have to train recruits on how to shoot.
However, all my military pilot hopes came to a grinding halt as I was eliminated from the next selection process. In the south of Switzerland, I went through the PC-7 simulator selection, and I was one of the 3 out of 5 who didn’t pass. The feedback from my debriefing was that I had too many preconceptions of how to fly and didn’t improve my flying between sim sessions as much as the other candidates. Which ties into the reality of flying in Europe: airlines and other companies much prefer ab-initio training where they get to mold their perfect employees to do just the way they want them to do things, which is also not the way I learned how to fly in the U.S.
So I spent a few months unemployed until I got a job at a local university as a UAS researcher and student project supervisor regarding UAS. The professor who hired me was very enthusiastic to have found an aerospace engineering specialist, considering that that degree is not available anywhere in Switzerland. I worked at the university in Switzerland for 8 months, but advancement in the field would have been impossible anywhere in Europe without a master’s degree, which pretty much everyone in academia had, at a minimum. And so there I was, working and flying drones, which was great but I still wanted to fly manned aircraft and I didn’t see how I was going to do that with less than 300 hours of total flying time with an FAA license in Switzerland. Naturally, I had to go back to where I could do just that.
And, in 2017, I was back! The first thing I needed to do was to get a flight review to get myself up-to-date with flying the U.S. Then, I completed the multi-engine CPL, and applied to any job I could find, which weren’t many. Nearly every job wanted experienced pilots (meaning over 700 hours), or didn’t pay a living wage. However I did find that nearly every flight school was looking for certified flight instructors (CFI), so I went and got the license. One thing led to another and I was back to my alma mater, only this time as an employed flight instructor.
For the following 2 years I worked to getting my 1500 hours that airlines required, and as a bonus, the flight school paid for my CFII (instrument instructor), and I was able to get my master of science degree in unmanned systems for free! That, combined with my aerospace engineering degree, gives me a solid plan B if ever something goes wrong in the future: I can always drop everything and zoom straight back to Switzerland and create a drone or UAS startup.
In any case, regional airlines were hiring like crazy. The aviation sector was growing at such a fast pace they actually had to hike wages to attract newly qualified pilots, which suited me just fine. After carefully reviewing all 5 job offers I had, I didn’t go where they were throwing the most money, but I chose the airline with the best reputation in terms of training and stability during troubled times. I happened to make a passing comment to a coworker once that aviation seems to take a really bad downturn every 10 years or so (9/11 attacks, 2008 financial crisis) and we’re probably overdue for the next one so we’d better get going asap.
The rest, as they say, is history.