AIRBUS

Ever since I can remember I always wanted to work for Airbus. With my profession that would be just about as achievable as winning the lottery five times in a row, but I still sent them a sappy CV as a long-shot. I'm expecting a call from John Leary any day now. :-)

The sappy letter:

As a child one of my favourite places to visit was the Maribor Airport. It was and still is a small-town airport. Then in the days of decline of Yugoslavia it rarely saw any traffic, with just one Swissair DC-9 doing touch-and-gos every other day as part of flight training. Yet that sole DC-9 and high-pitched spooling of its Pratt&Whitney JT8D turbines was enough to get my imagination going. I would imagine it going to exotic far away locations after each take-off, despite knowing it will just make a go around and land in a few minutes. I would put myself in place of those lucky engineers and line-workers  fortunate enough to assemble this marvelous colossal feat of engineering. It was then that I got hooked for life on civil aviation industry.

Why do I love it? Well it's a number of things. First it's an industry which allows common people to experience the awe-inspiring engineering perfection of modern state-of-the-art machines costing as much as 300 million euros for as little as 100 euros they pay for a ticket. It brings an average person closer to the cutting edge of human technology. In this aspect aviation is absolutely unique.  Hardly anyone has a chance to experience the acceleration of a formula 1 race car, yet almost anyone with 20euros in their pocket can take a no-frills flight, listen to the whine of a multi-million dollar turbo-fan jet engine as it spools up on take-off and see our world as it was never intended to see. There is no other activity in history of mankind that has been longed for quite as much as joining birds in the sky.  It seems like we have an inexplicable natural urge to see the world from above, despite our roots in the African savannah which placed us firmly on terra firma.  We gazed enviously at birds of prey soaring elegantly over mountains and canyons, until our endless drive to join them pushed us towards finding a way to subjugate the laws of science.

The way we managed to subjugate them, is in fact what I love about aviation the most. Many pioneers of flight were killed. First flight of the Wright brothers was in fact shorter than the length of a modern airliner. Yet we persevered. Steps were slow and painful, but we  overcame them one by one. Per aspera ad astra. Today's aviation knowledge, much like any other human endevour, stands on the shoulders of giants - not just of aviation, but of science as a whole. Extraordinarily sophisticated modern commercial airplanes like the Airbus A380 could never leave the drawing boards, if they didn't bring out something special in humanity. An understanding that giant industrial undertakings like this can only materialize if we work together.

An Airbus A380 was designed, manufactured and put into production by engineers from various European countries, whose grandparents and even parents slaughtered each other during the bloodshed of WW2 just six decades ago. Yet projects like these united them, their talents, dreams and visions into one singular drive towards perfection. Designers in Broughton, UK and Toulouse, France were working hand in hand with their peers in Hamburg, Germany, to create a monument of contemporary European Union. These men and women are a symbol of our true greatness, as a species. A small but significant peek into what we can achieve when we work together as brothers and sisters united in overcoming ambitious challenges  we set for ourselves. But also a glimmer of hope that these kind of international collaborations might pave the way to humanity of tomorrow - humanity that knows no ethnic, political or social prejudice and works together as one species. Thus I hope aviation and other human endeavours on the edges of scientific discovery will help us get that one step closer to this elusive multi-cultural dream which is so easy to embrace and understand, yet so horrendously difficult to achieve in a divisive world we live in. This is why I love the aviation industry. This is why I want to be a part of your team.