Jon gained a PPL at age 17, trained by my grandfather, a retired test pilot. He joined the army with the intent of flying for the Army Air Corps, unfortunately, a failed medical lead to 6 years as an infantry officer mostly spent in Ulster hedgerows and riots around the Divis Flats.
John left the army to train as a commercial pilot at Oxford Air Training School in 1986, qualified on fixed wing and then in 1989 on rotary.
Since then John has flown a mix of fixed and rotary ops, from A320 loads around Europe, helicopters on the North Sea, on UN support in Africa (5 civil wars) Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia. He took redundancy in 1989 and fell into AOC management as a Chief Pilot and latterly Ops Director flying a mix of corporate jets and helicopters, as well as working as a film and tv pilot flying both filming aircraft and stunt work.
John now runs his own company offering turn key operations on fixed and rotary wing for corporate and VVIP owners. With 17,500 hours I’m current on G650, EC135, EC155 and A109.
Apart from CHIRP John also works with the UKAB as one of two civilian helicopter advisers.
John added – ‘It’s been a fun and very eventful career, my ambitions now are to leave aviation as a safer career than it was when I started, to retire solvent (oddly Covid made the VIP market very busy) improve my golf, and to eventually die on a green English airfield to the music of gypsy engines and the wind over Tiger Moth wings at the age of 103’
John Hill
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