The life of a long-haul airline pilot has always looked glamorous from the outside. You see us walking with purpose through the terminal in our uniforms, black cabin bags rolling behind us, with a flight case on top, heading toward a jet waiting to take us through the night to some exotic destination. People glance up at the departure boards, follow the list of far-flung destinations, and wonder which one we’re bound for.
They imagine the adventure, the excitement, the mystique. And sometimes it is all of those things. But living the long-haul lifestyle is something entirely different. When I began writing this article, my thoughts immediately went to Harry Chapin’s classic song ‘Cats in the Cradle,’ especially the lines “But there were planes to catch and bills to pay / He learned to walk while I was away…”
Those lyrics have echoed through much of my career because, in many ways, they perfectly capture how my family’s life has unfolded. It’s the rhythm we grew up with, and what we’ve always known.
The Early Days & Becoming A Father
I started long-haul flying in 1994, with a rotation of London to Hong Kong, Narita, Los Angeles, and Johannesburg: the Far East, West, and South. Most were four or five-day trips, and, in those early days, the world was very different. With no mobile roaming, and fragile dial-up internet in crew hotels, contacting home wasn’t part of daily life, and often impossible unless something urgent happened.
Our first child was born in 2000. I was fortunate enough to make it home for the birth, something many colleagues sadly miss due to the nature of the job. However, in the following years, I was still flying those long trips, and staying connected remained difficult. Roaming was expensive, WiFi was unreliable, and video calling was a novelty that rarely worked. I would walk back through our front door after a trip and instantly see the changes in my son: new expressions, habits, and even words.
I missed his first steps and words, and my wife would send me tiny, pixelated videos of these milestones. These were blurry and short, but priceless. Still, this was our normal. Our daughter arrived in 2002, and, once again, I made it home for her birth, but disappeared a few days later on a long-haul rotation. My wife suddenly had two babies under two years old and no family support.
Both of us are from Australia, so there were no grandparents down the road to help. I was either away for four to five days at a time, or in London training pilots in the simulator, still gone for days each week despite being ‘closer.’ My wife became, in many ways, a part-time single mum, and, when I did come home, I had to adapt to nap times, to school runs, and their rhythm, not mine.
Growing Up Online
As technology improved, so did our ability to keep in touch. Long-distance calls became clearer, and video calls more reliable. I got used to watching my children grow up through a screen, often while sitting in a hotel room on the other side of the world. In their teenage years, I often helped my children with their homework online, especially maths. I still remember those 2 am FaceTime calls from Hong Kong.
My daughter and I would each be on our phones, with our laptops open and textbooks propped up as we worked through the problems together. There were a few tears along the way, but she learned maths online from half a world away, and those late-night study sessions have become some of my favourite memories.
They adapted, as children do. But the life they saw through that camera didn’t inspire them to follow in my footsteps. Neither of them has any interest in becoming long-haul pilots, as they’ve seen the cost as well as the perks.
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The Upside: A Family That Has Seen the World
Still, it wasn’t all sacrifice. My children might have grown up with a father who was away half the month, but they also became some of the most well-travelled young people around. Before starting school, they had already visited more places than many people do in a lifetime.
They slept in business class beds on ‘Daddy’s plane’ and thought nothing of hopping between continents on trips to Disneyland in LA, Disney World in Orlando, Disneyland Hong Kong, and Safaris in South Africa and Kenya.
There were also city breaks in New York, San Francisco, Dubai, Washington, Chicago, and Boston. Some of our favourite memories included 10 Christmases spent skiing and snowboarding at Big Bear, California. This was a tradition that became uniquely ours.
Understanding The Long-Haul Roster
So how do you build a life around long-haul flying? Airlines constantly adjust schedules based on season and aircraft type. A jet flying from London to Cape Town in the Southern Hemisphere summer may switch to London–Orlando in the Northern Hemisphere’s peak season. Pilots are limited to 900 flying hours a year, which averages about 80 hours a month. Long-haul sectors typically last 6–12 hours (sometimes more), so most pilots complete about four trips a month.
If the flight is shorter than 9.5 hours, the layover is usually 24 hours. Longer sectors often come with 48-hour layovers, so most trips last three to four days, meaning we’re away from home roughly for 15 days a month. Many people think that that’s still more time off than a normal 9-to-5 job, but those 15 days away include multiple nights spent fighting jet lag in a hotel room, and another chunk of nights recovering from it once home. Mitigating fatigue isn’t a phase of the job: it’s a career-long reality.
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Seniority: The Invisible Architecture of a Pilot’s Life
Most airlines operate strict seniority systems. The longer you’ve been with the company, the more control you have over your roster in terms of getting the best trips (and days off), and absences for school holidays, religious holidays, and family events. New pilots also bid for trips, but only for what the senior pilots don’t want. There are separate lists for First Officers and Captains. When you reach the top of the FO list, life becomes manageable.
You can pick better trips, and get weekends and school holidays off, but then comes the promotion to Captain. After this, you’re back at the bottom, again bidding for what’s left. That often means working weekends and school holidays, and flying through hurricane season in the Caribbean and blizzards on the US East Coast. Senior pilots, quite understandably, don’t volunteer for difficulty. Some airlines rotate bidding groups quarterly to give everyone a fair chance. It helps, but only to a point.
Finding Creative Solutions
I became a Captain before my children were born, so I spent their early years away for most weekends and holidays. To make it work, I had to be creative. In summer, a four-night Washington DC trip was perfect, as the city was quiet, museums were empty, the zoo was uncrowded, and the hotel buffet and pool were pure magic to our young children. Christmas, however, is a sensitive topic in every pilot household, as not everyone can have Christmas off: far from it, in fact.
As a junior Captain, I realised that instead of risking a destination requiring visas or awkward travel arrangements, I could bid for one where the whole family could join me, so our perfect Christmas became a five-day LA trip departing on December 23. We’d land in the afternoon, pick up a hire car, stop at the supermarket for supplies and a pre-lit Christmas tree, then drive up into the San Bernardino mountains to a rented log cabin overlooking the slopes of Big Bear.
We could then enjoy skiing or snowboarding on Christmas Eve, and Santa always found us, even up the mountain. The ‘extra’ suitcase we brought was always mysteriously full of gifts on the flight home. We’d ski again on Christmas Day, and then head back down the mountain on Boxing Day to fly home. We repeated that trip ten times over twenty years, each time in a different cabin, each time just as magical.
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A Life of Contrasts
Long-haul flying is a life of contrasts, and extraordinary moments wrapped around ordinary sacrifices, with unforgettable experiences shaped around the routines you miss. It is a career spent carrying passengers across the world, while your own world grows up in
snapshots, video calls, and welcome-home hugs.
To many, it looks glamorous, and yes, sometimes it is. However, it’s also a life built on balance, compromise, and a deep appreciation for the moments you don’t miss.
The world has changed, my children have grown, my logbook is almost full, and yet the sky still feels like home. After all these years, I’ve realised that flying didn’t take me away from life. Rather, it helped me appreciate the parts of life worth coming home to.
