Flutter Until You Fly

When he was six years old, he declared to the hearing of some friends: “I want to be a pilot when I grow up,” and it generated mocking laughter from them. The laughter became louder when at the end of sixth grade, his father lost his job and life went further downhill. From his family couch surfing in the neighbourhood for about seven years to having to cook and hawk kenkey, gari, and bake bread as a secondary school student, he kept going. He took the A Levels twice and performed poorly, disqualifying him from joining the air force even though he passed the army’s assessments twice. In Flutter Until You Fly, Captain Solomon Quainoo shares how he overcame these stumbling blocks and more, worked 17-hour days as a labourer, cleaner, pizza delivery guy, and traffic warden, to still become a captain of the world’s biggest passenger aircraft.

Solomon Nana Quainoo is a Ghanaian airline captain working with McDan Aviation, a Private Jet Charter company in Ghana. He previously worked with Emirates Airlines based in Dubai and flew the world’s biggest passenger airplane, the A380. Prior to Emirates, he was a pilot at British Airways and British Midland International. Before qualifying to become a pilot, he worked as a material agent/design engineer at British Airways.

In 2019, he was awarded the 3G Aviation Man of the Year in New York, USA. In the same year he was also named the 2019 Aviation Man of the Year in West Africa at the Balofon Aviation Awards held in Accra, Ghana. Again, he won the ‘Africa Travel 100’ honours at the maiden edition of Africa Diaspora Tourism Conference held in Nigeria, also in 2019.