I’ve been close to what happens in transport and logistics my whole life, even though I didn’t recognize it as a sign at the time. My father was a basketball player, and later an international referee and delegate, which meant he was constantly traveling. As a small child, I would wait for him to come home — usually by plane. That feeling of anticipation, the sound of an aircraft landing, quietly built something in me long before I understood what it was.
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My First Flight: A DC-9 and Landing in Dubrovnik
Then, one day, my father took me on my first-ever flight — a DC-9. The experience was indescribable. The DC-9 has always held a special appeal for passengers because of its rear-mounted engines — they make the cabin unexpectedly quiet for an aircraft of its era, while the real power only becomes apparent at the moment of takeoff, when the aircraft climbs sharply and steeply, leaving that unforgettable pit-in-the-stomach feeling every future pilot remembers well. Landing in Dubrovnik, with the sea and the old city walls in view, stayed etched in my memory as the moment aviation stopped being something I watched from the outside and became something I wanted to live.
Years of Travel
After that, I started traveling a lot myself — first for university overseas, and later for work, across Europe. I kept thinking about how to shorten travel time, and often dreamed about one day, as a pilot, flying straight to my hometown — Novi Sad.
The Ad That Started It All
Years later, the financial conditions finally lined up — aviation is, let’s be honest, an expensive path — and I finally found the time as well. That’s exactly when I stumbled onto an ad for a flight school offering a discount. From that moment on, my path to the cockpit was set.
Training Across Three Countries
I completed my PPL training in Serbia, then enrolled in ATPL theory in Hungary, before finally passing my CPL in Croatia. I consider this path — across three different countries and schools — to have been extremely valuable. I saw different ways of doing things, and met and flew with many people and instructors who gave me experience I couldn’t put a price on. I believe I learned far more this way than I would have by staying at a single school from start to finish, in the classic “zero to hero” model.
Today — and What Comes Next
Today I’m a commercial pilot, with full privileges and ratings on single-engine and multi-engine aircraft, as well as an instrument rating (IR). Do you think this is the end of the road? No — this is only the end of the beginning. The best is yet to come.