Living the Dream!

This is the story of my life, from childhood struggles with polio to leaving home at seventeen for an apprenticeship with British Aircraft Corporation, working on the iconic Concorde. My career path took me through Westland Helicopters and British Rail, before a 22-year career at British Airways in London, where I became a Senior Airline Engineer, licensed to maintain a fleet of company aircraft.

After that, I turned to flying for pleasure and eventually became a Chief Flying Instructor, starting my own flying school. Over 36 years of training pilots, I experienced fourteen engine failures, three near misses, and two bird strikes—the most dramatic being a fight with a buzzard that smashed through the windscreen, hitting my student in the face, leaving him with a black eye and a split lip, and ending up draped around his neck like a scarf. I also survived a cockpit fire shortly after takeoff that burned my left leg.

Then there’s the story of a mild-mannered, religious pilot who became a good friend. He once told me about the day his ejection seat failed during a jet spin-out, sending him plummeting toward the ground. Resigned to death, he was saved by a voice in his head that he believed was God, offering the solution just in time.

Austin James was born in a sleepy town in Wales. He overcame polio at age two with no more than a secondary education and without much prospect of employment in the area. He travelled across the newly built Severn Bridge opened in 1969 to an apprenticeship on Concorde, at Filton, before moving on to a twenty-two-year career with British Airways, London, another difficult move, then becoming Chief Flying Instructor for Cloud Base Aviation, a company he set up, over the past 36 years. He tells of the interesting stories and pitfalls that come with that life of adventure.