Captain Mark Smith's professional journey teaches why should you love your craft!

Captain Mark Smith, a seasoned Captain at Cathay Pacific Airways, is a passionate employee of the company who has moved ranks during his career. He has been with the airline for more than 20 years now and is a reliable asset for his company.

Born and brought up in Brisbane, Australia, he started his career as Australian Air Force Pilot. He had some unforgettable experiences there in terms of handling the flight comfortably even in the worst situations.

After serving there for 10 years and gathering all the required knowledge, he moved to Civil Aviation industry. He had to do some research to find the best place for himself and soon he came across Cathay Pacific.

He underwent several interviews and finally chose to work with Cathay Pacific. Finally, in 1998, he moved to Hong Kong and started a new life as a co-pilot in the company. Very soon, with the experience and fast learning attitude, he became the most reliable pilot of the airline.

He served the airline as pilot for over 10 years but even after his retirement as the pilot of the mainstream flights, he, due to his exceptional skill set, was retained to fly Cathay's AirBus fleet. He stopped flying flights a couple of years back but Cathay Pacific still wasn't ready to let him go.

He was enrolled as the Flying Training Manager where he grooms new pilots with all his experience. His hard work and dedication towards his craft has won him enormous respect among his colleagues.

"Apart from training these pilots, I am responsible for hiring them as well. This is a great responsibility as we can not afford to make any mistakes here. Hence, I have to conduct real rigorous tests before finally on boarding a pilot. After hiring, we invest a lot of time and effort in them before finally giving them a go ahead in the pilot's seat," said Smith.

Now, after becoming the flight training manager, Smith can choose when he wants to fly and he only flies once in a week or two. "Cathay Pacific doesn't make you fly much during the initial days and keep you like a cruise pilot. Apart from this, the company even pays you to have food at various restaurants and visit the nearby places where the flight has to stay for a while," he said, adding, "As I have become the training manager now, I am allowed to choose when I want to fly. So, I only fly once in a week or two."

The exceptional pilot's favourite aircraft are 747 and A350 and even after so many years, he still loves to fly and enjoy the beauty of the endless sky.

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