Retirement or Rewirement?

Preparation – Attitude – Values - Legacy

When you’re having a blast in your career and every day presents something new and marvellous for you to consider, retirement can seem a dirty word. And not only for pilots, but likely for their partners who have become used to having the house to themselves most of the time!

Nonetheless, retirement comes to all of us eventually – either forced or chosen. Surely, chosen is better for our mental health - and the mental health of those around us, who care for us and will have to live with us after the final flight.

So, we agree – by choice is best. Therefore, the first thing to be done is planning for retirement. And it’s never too soon to start. Retirement looms large in your 60’s, is on the horizon in your 50’s, and is considered a life landmark (often associated with the onset of old age) when you are in your 30’s and 40’s. But planning is best done when you are in your income earning prime. Because a good retirement is an enriching rewirement.

As a pilot, you’re never too young to plan a good retirement. Afterall, your medical could be revoked at any point – through illness, injury or loss or competence. Are you saving enough of your income to get through most eventualities? A medical retirement can occur at any time. Is your post flying war chest up to snuff?

Finance is not the only consideration, however. What are you going to do after you leave the airline? A loose plan to play golf every day for the following 30 years is going to grow stale pretty quickly!

There is a third consideration too. What is your mindset? Will you manage having to plan every day ahead of you? Afterall, for the last 30 odd years, you have been told every month what the next month is going to look like. Everything has been planned out for you – when you start work, when you eat, where you’re going to spend the night, who you will be associating with…. Do you even possess the skills to plan and deliver on the logistics of an everyday life? Your partner will not think kindly of you becoming an emotional and physical burden on them

A handy piece of advice we received when we were planning John’s retirement was to anticipate that between the ages of 60 and 75, you will continue to have ‘robust’ health and will be able to complete overseas travel relatively well and continue with any sports you enjoy – such as flying, diving, skiing, running etc. These are your high costs years. Grandkids will feature and make demands of you – financially and physically. But once you get past 75 and on to 80, the body slows down and you’re not so motivated to travel or do the heavy lifting of sport anymore. These are you low cost years. Then the last years, those over 80, is when costs ramp up considerably as medical (and personal) care is more often required.

Of note, in New Zealand, women live to an average of 91 years and men to an average of 89 years. Plan for about 25 - 30 years of retirement.

John approached the usual suspects of our wonderful bunch of supporters, many of whom have now retired and one who is going through the transition after much planning and together we provide you with some insights of what planning for retirement is really like. We also have some advice from aviation royalty – a Captain whose airline career was probably more stellar than most….

Financial Planning

According to Sorted.org there are six steps in financial preparation…

1. Start Your Emergency Fund. Start with stashing $1000 away in a fund you can’t access very well and keep growing it until you have a figure that you feel safe with, should anything turn to custard.

2. Get Your Kiwisaver on Track. For a retirement that gives you choices, you’ll need about $350,000 in Kiwisaver or other funds by the time you get to 65. This will supplement your superannuation – currently$538.42 for a single person living alone, $497.00 for a single person sharing, $414.17 for a couple where only one person qualifies, and $828.34 for a couple where both qualify. These are gross (before-tax) rates.

3. Tackle Debt. Get rid of high interest loans and credit card debt, pay off the mortgage as fast as you can.

4. Cover Your People, Money and Stuff. Make sure your insurances (life, income, house, contents, car etc) are adequate, wills sorted, and Enduring Powers of Attorneys are in place.

5. Work Out Your Retirement Number. Know what the shortfall will be between what you will receive from Superannuation and what you want to have as income per week. (This ties into number 2 above).

6. Set Your Goals – and Reach Them. There are five areas to work on – Experiences, People, Security, Your Stuff and Wealth

For more information on the above steps – check out https://sorted.org.nz/guides/retirement/how-to-plan-save-and-invest-for-retirement/

What Will You DO After Retirement?

John is an excellent case study into the fulfilling retirement years one can enjoy.

After 40 years of airline flying, John was ready for a change and after five years of the two of us planning his retirement, John was able to retire slightly early (at the age of 63). His last flight was in February 2018 and within the month we had plunged ourselves into the charity work that now takes up at least a third of our lives.

John had already been a JP for more than 20 years when he retired and he upped his availability to this good cause and took on more responsibility running the local chapter of JPs committed to operating a service desk in the local library.

We operate as a team to run the Pauwels Flying Scholarship charity, where since 2018 we have helped 19* young people on their way to becoming airline pilots with a total value of nearly $250,000 being awarded in scholarships. We also run another charity where John is a wedding and funeral celebrant (and I write the services) and we donate $300 per wedding or funeral to the charity of choice of the wedding couple or funeral family.

*This number includes this year’s winners who are yet to be announced.

We travel extensively to far flung (and usually, cold places) and also dedicate a lot of time to our grandchildren each week.

John and I snowmobiling in the Norwegian Arctic 2023

John also keeps up his social side with weekly coffee and bar meetings with his friends and is part of a group of nutters who are retired airline pilots who love mountain biking. We regularly meet with friends for dinners out.

And to keep his hand in with flying, John is an instructor for Mike Pero’s Jetex B737 Simulator which is available to the general public.

John is also an active mentor to the young pilots we have come to know through the scholarship and meets/chats with them all on a regular basis.

Yes, our activities could be considered extreme by others, but we are happy and involved in our community and family. We are not people who can sit still for long.

Well accepted advice for enjoying a long and happy life includes regular physical activity, eating a healthy plant-based diet, maintaining a healthy weight, getting enough quality sleep, and not smoking. Additionally, managing stress, prioritizing strong social relationships, and maintaining a positive mindset contribute significantly to both a longer, and better, quality of life.

Retirement Racing at John’s 65th Birthday Party

How you achieve your happy and healthy retirement is up to you – you may choose to mirror aspects of John’s life, or you might say ‘Hell, no! Ain’t no time for that!’ and do your own thing. That’s fine – just don’t waste the years sitting on a couch balancing a beer on your belly!

What About Mental Well-being Post Airline Career?

The life of an airline pilot is far removed from real every day life led by the rest of the population. Ushered from place to place, isolated in a flight deck and in hotels for decades, it can be hard to leave that remarkable yet artificial way of life behind and join the herd.

Yup! that just about sums up the life of a ‘working’ pilot!

The cloud bound way of life could not be any more different to that life led by the ground bound mere mortals. A short and brutal fossick around Google indicates that 0.0043% of the global population are airline pilots. This compares to 12% being office workers.

When you are paid so well, wear a fabulous uniform, catch the admiring looks from the public and get paid to travel the world, the idea of negotiating rush hour traffic twice a day 5 days a week, queuing to pay for groceries, handling a million mundane tasks and chores at the weekend and taking holidays when everyone else does – doesn’t bear thinking about.

Especially if you feel your self-worth and purpose in life is inextricably connected to your airline role.

Over the years, we have seen respected airline pilots absolutely lose the plot when they finally retire. With no planning under their belts, no flashy uniform to prop up their egos, they find themselves plunging around in unfamiliar territory, having lost their self imagined mana. Affairs, marriage break ups, deplorable behaviour, mental health crises, bewilderment and anger do not make a pretty sight and instead of eliciting sympathy from others who have retired successfully, these people can look like failures to the rest of us. Afterall, they have had more than 40 years to plan.

Additionally, in a tightly controlled world of promotion made only on the basis of seniority, it’s patently clear that young pilots in airlines, trying to make a go of their careers are frustratingly held back from the better paying roles by the legion of beyond retirement age pilots that choose to remain in the flight deck. Are those pilots who remain flying long after retirement age selfish? The opinion of the younger generations of pilots is very much in the affirmative.

What is stopping these old buggers from retiring? Excuses? Circumstances? Or simply not being able to bear the thought of NOT being an airline pilot?

How Do You Transition?

Here are the personal thoughts of several pilots.

Captain Bob Henderson (ex RNZAF and Air New Zealand)

So, the cognitive process was:

- 2008 - prices for land are drifting downwards due to the GFC

-let’s look at options for bailing out of Auckland, resulting in

- buying 2 hectares in the coromandel in 2011

- fast forward to 2014, approaching 21 years with Air New Zealand (having done 22 years with RNZAF) and a plan to sell up in Auckland, retire from Air New Zealand, and relax, but…

- offer from Mike Dorrian to sort out problems with the A320 instructor group which I accepted with a 12-month limit

- resulting in a premeditated retirement from the airline at age 67, and

- still enabled me to contribute to international air sport

- which translated into the roles I now have (including being a member of the “just stood up” National Aviation Council)

So - not much of my path in the last 10 years has been “unplanned” except for Mike Dorrian convincing me to give back to Air New Zealand to sort out the instructional issues on the A320.

I’m thinking that, just like a lot of people in other occupations, we have actually just continued with our core interests (instructing, politics, communication etc).

For me I have a 50+ year interest in forwarding aviation in its many forms, and I have not “retired” from that objective.

Captain Ian Walls (ex RNZAF and Air New Zealand)

Some thoughts of stepping away from flying.....

I’m of the opinion that the passion for flying doesn’t go away .... but I have become comfortable that I don’t need to actually fly to remain enthusiastic about the life that I have had.

I never did feel that flying defined me and that I somehow needed to prove that I could still do it to maintain my "mana". So, I have, and never did have, any desire to fly for ever. If I lived in Auckland, I might have had a dabble in the simulator for AirNZ but I’m certainly not going to put up with continued commuting to achieve it and in all likelihood, I would have decided that I didn’t have time for another full time job.

Sometimes I reflect on talking to WW2 guys at 75 Sqn functions when I was in the RNZAF. I did enjoy their stories but never felt that what they did was completely relevant to what I was doing. When I started flying, WW2 was less than 40 years prior to that date. Guess what!!! Some of my old stories are now more than 40 years old!!! So, I guess some of the stuff I learned is about as relevant to the new boys as the WW2 stuff was to me. I’m betting that if you asked someone to manually track the 174 Ridial from AKL, that might be a problem!! What is a DME arc they would ask.

But, for me, the thing that remains forever relevant is the passing on, and the acknowledgment, of the passion for flying. At times I see it in the face of a 15 year old and I always encourage that enthusiasm and tell them that I jealous and If I was their age then I’d start again on exactly the same path.

There will be some tough times in the next 40 or 50 years of the youngster’s aviation life but that never ending passion is what makes it all worth it .... and makes it fun.

Apart from instructing in Mike Pero’s B737 sim, I haven’t found a flying activity that holds my interest, but I’m totally happy with that. If something turns up, then great - but if it never really does then I’ve got heaps of other stuff to do, and I don’t regret a day of what I have already done.

Captain Arthur Gatland (ex RAF and Air New Zealand)

I never use the word "retirement" because since stopping flying I have never been so busy!

Approaching 65, I had the option of transferring to A320 domestic / regional flying but Air NZ was keen for me to become a full-time B787 / B777 flight simulator instructor / examiner, and I have always enjoyed instructing from the challenge and reward considerations, and I felt the lifestyle would be better in the years ahead.

I had no trouble focusing on the future, having been asked to review and update the full B787 type rating course, and also to help develop a Shortened Transition Course between the Boeing 787 and 777. After development I presented this course to NZCAA inspectors for approval, and it has been successfully in operation in Air NZ for 8 years saving $millions in training costs.

Other projects have kept me busy. My father had passed aged 90, and we felt his "wartime scrapbook" discussing his WW2 Stirling bomber operations, being shot down over France, and experiences with multiple escapes from prisoner-of-war camps, was far too good to be kept within the family! I edited the story with photos and published his book "Escape - the Best Sport Ever!" which is an outstanding story and has sold 1,000 copies so far.

Following that, my mother made me promise to write my own memoires on my RAF, Air NZ and gliding plus multiple national sporting experiences, so another book publishing project was completed a year later.

To prevent any chance of being bored, I am also writing and updating ATPL exam questions for Aspeq, supplying questions for NZ, Singapore and Australia. This certainly keeps the brain challenged - and instructing and question writing are mutually beneficial to keep flying thought processes up to speed.

..and I manage and still play in the Air NZ basketball team, with some fencing competing and refereeing to fill in any gaps in my spare time.

Captain Morris Tull – currently flying an A380 for Emirates but in the process of moving home to NZ to retire…

After a life of enjoying flying, deciding when to retire or start retiring is a very big decision.

It will be affected by family history, maybe a parent died young and did not get a retirement. Maybe you want to be physically active in the early years of retirement. Maybe you want to spend more time with elderly parents before they all pass away. Maybe you now have some grandkids to enjoy. Maybe you don’t cope with the sleep disruption anymore. Maybe you just want to return to your home country and culture, maybe you or your spouse has had a health scare or challenge. Quite possibly all the above.

In your later career, you can start looking at the options of early retirement also, if you have been fortunate with your investments and planning, or taken some risks that paid off or even inherited some money.

The aim is to retire with your health and enough funds, hobbies and friends to enjoy it.

The difficult part is that you are likely on the best salary due to your seniority and service and turning off the money taps is scary.

If you really love your job, location, work hours and you and your family have good health, certainly enjoy it as long as you still enjoy it.

Good luck with your retirement decisions, everyone is different.

And words of advise from an extra special guest contributor – Captain Mike Bannister, Chief Concord Pilot for British Airways….

Make the most of retirement by keeping occupied.
Do your best to keep physically and mentally fit.
Be aware of the effects of your retirement on friends and family, remember they have been used to you not being around all the time.
Realise that any plans made are now changeable, unlike an airline roster, if something you planned to do tomorrow changes. It doesn’t matter. If you make plans, you can now change them if you want to.
Always look forward, don’t look back in envy

John and I had a two hour interview with Mike, recently. We talked about all aspects of the Concord era; and we will run that interview in an upcoming article, shortly.

Summary

This has been quite a long article, with lots of information to digest and ponder. Some of the stand out points are as follows:-

• No matter your age, start your financial planning now

• In the years approaching your retirement spend quality time creating a plan on how you intend to spend the next 25 – 30 years

• If you wish, expect to stay involved in aviation in some way – perhaps by giving back or being in non – flying roles within your airline

• Be aware of the impact your retirement will have on family and friends

• Maintain a positive outlook – keep your eyes firmly forward and embrace your memories, fondly, of what went before, when you wore a uniform.

• Don’t be angry that you no longer have that unique lifestyle or perceived mana. Your mana is tied to your actions and acheivements – not to your uniform and pay packet.

An Interview with a 1%er. Emma Hamilton, Airline Captain.