Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. As you know,

in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, it is the A-level day and lots of people now having a bit of

a rethink about their future. And one of the most exciting things you could possibly ever do, I think,

is work for an airline and the most exciting job, without a doubt, is being a pilot. So I've come here

to Waterside, which is British Airways headquarters, close to Heathrow. And I'm at the great position

of speaking to Senior first officer Genevieve

Permain who is a British Airways 777-triple-7 pilot flying long haul and Genevieve how long

you've been working for BA so it's coming up to eight years now I've been working for BA but

that's as a pilot.

I have always actually worked for BA.

I started BA at 19 as cabin crew and I did five years as cabin crew and then I decided I desperately wanted to come a pilot.

So I actually left BA to do my pilot training and then I couldn't get a pilot job straight

away so I came back to BA, worked on the ground, got myself a job at BA City Flyer for three years

and then came back over to Mainline VA on the triple sevens. So all in all it's actually nearly

about 18 years I've worked for BA. Well congratulations, what a career path.

But the great news is, I think, that a new British Airways initiative is that actually you can join as a Gazette and be paid for learning to fly and, obviously, with a path to becoming a pilot.

Tell us about that.

This is the most exciting thing we have done for years and a very long time coming and

everyone is so excited about it.

It's been over 20 years since we've done a fully, fully funded scheme.

We had our future pilot scheme. It must have been when I started flying about 10 years ago now, but this is completely different.

This is fully funded. So BA are going to pay for all your training, your tight rating at the end,

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