Nicholas Bird continues his series on professional flight schools offering student loans for training towards the commercial pilot licence. After a short review on the school he interviews graduates to find out where they are now, how they got there and what advice they can give to people in the early stages of their aviation careers. For readers who are or know anyone who is considering a career in aviation, a student in aviation, or even graduates looking to find their first job, this series can give an idea of how pilots make their way through this industry in the 21st century.
Danny Clemens brings an exciting story to the Realising The Dream series. A former German Navy recruit, he has had a global career, dabbled in the American corporate world and moved to New Zealand to become a pilot, all after escaping the communist clutches of East Germany when aged 15.
Danny was born in 1973 and raised in Glauchau in Soviet-controlled East Germany. Life there was very different from that of the West, and many people struggled to escape over the Berlin Wall to West Germany which had originally been divided into three Allied zones of occupation between the British, French and Americans. Between the wall’s construction in 1961 and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989, around 5000 people tried to flee westwards over the wall, with some 170 killed by East German guards.
There were few ways for Easterners to gain access to the Western world, but a number of people were granted legitimate rights to cross the wall and start work in the West, relinquishing their East German ties. For many this was the jackpot, and Danny and his family were granted this leave.
His new life began in Celle, a town in Lower Saxony on the River Aller and part of the British Zone. Danny enrolled at Hoelty Gymnasium, the high school where he studied physics, maths and German as his main subjects. “English was neglected in East Germany; it was not compulsory.”
Danny’s competence in English came later, but his lack of the language on leaving school made him think it would be a barrier to his flying dreams. He opted instead for an alternative career as a seaman in the German Navy.
Aged 17, he embarked on a five-year naval career, working in submarines and specialising in general electronics, developing his confidence and technical skills, furthered through a course in information management studies after he left the navy.
At this point, around 1997, the flying bug began to chew away. Danny’s curiosity found him approaching the likes of Lufthansa to check what options were available if he chose to become a commercial pilot.
An offer of a job from Baker Hughes, a major American oilfield services company, put Danny’s commercial pilot dreams on hold. Accepting the offer to work in their information departments, Danny found himself travelling to Houston regularly for work, spending up to four weeks at a time there and developing his English.
Also at this time Danny was getting his first taste of flying. Enrolled at Flugsportverein, a German flying school, he spent a year and a half of weekend flying gaining his PPL. About his English competence at PPL level, Danny explains, “In uncontrolled, low level flying under 10,000ft German is sufficient and English is not mandatory.”
Danny stayed with Baker Hughes for a solid 10 years. “There was job security here, but a flying career never disappeared out of my mind.”
But in 2006 Danny’s life changed route in a major way. After years of saving, he and his partner Lisa ventured on a six-week holiday, touring New Zealand in a campervan. “We had no intention to migrate, but we liked it so much the idea of immigration was born.”
On returning to Germany, Danny prepared to leave Baker Hughes and Lisa to graduate from university. Lisa was offered a job as a social worker in Nelson and Danny had to find a new career path for himself. His search quickly took him to Nelson Aviation College, where he enrolled to earn his CPL and then moved on to become an instructor.
The Nelson Aviation College is a professional flight training school based in Motueka, one of the closest towns to the Abel Tasman and Kahurangi National Parks, and just a short drive from the city of Nelson at the north of the South Island. Close by are beautiful beach settings and from both land and sky students are visually spoilt by the shorelines and mountain terrain this region has to offer.
Students train under the umbrella of the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology’s (NMIT) Diploma in Aviation Science programme. Here they have the opportunity to study for a handful of exams at the end of the professional licence training and receive their diploma.
Armed with a PPL and over 100 hours of solo flying, Danny’s dreams took flight in January 2008 with the start of his training at Nelson Aviation College.
Does he have any tips for those starting out? “Try to make sure you are prepared and stay current with maths and physics.”
Danny became a commercial pilot by August 2008 and believes “the course is structured so well that students should succeed”.
He has gone on to complete his more advanced instructor and instrument ratings and is now a member of the college staff. His dedication to flying has seen him pass all his ATPL theory subjects to graduate from the NMIT with a Diploma in Aviation as well as become a VFR B category instructor, a ground navigation theory instructor and also the college information manager, overseeing all IT matters.
Danny is a warm, friendly instructor with, not surprisingly, a technical mind. He would like to thank everyone in the Nelson Aviation College team for his recent successes, including Giles and Katrina Witney and Jeremy Anderson.
- Report and photographs by Nicholas Bird