In this episode of The Flight Pod, airline captain and YouTube creator Petter Hörnfeldt shares his journey from a 14-year-old landing a Cessna on his first lesson to becoming a 737 captain, type rating examiner, and the creator of Mentour Pilot and Mentour Now. Petter reflects on the discipline and determination that propelled him through Sweden’s competitive government-sponsored pilot training, his passion for instructing, and the art of mentoring both in the cockpit and online. He discusses how he built one of the world’s most respected aviation channels, his mission to educate and reassure millions of viewers, and the balance between authenticity and storytelling in aviation media. The conversation also explores his views on industry safety, memorable flying experiences, and why taking a break from commercial flying has given him new ways to inspire the next generation of aviators.
In this episode of The Flight Pod, host Michael Arron delves into the remarkable career of airline pilot turned successful YouTuber, Petter Hörnfeldt, known as Mentour Pilot. Petter boasts over 2.2 million subscribers on his YouTube channel. Michael and Petter discuss how Petter's father's passion for flying influenced his career choice, the early exposure to aviation, and how a significant birthday gift solidified his dream of becoming a pilot. Petter shares his journey through rigorous training, the challenges and highlights of his aviation career, his rise to captaincy with Ryanair, and his transition into becoming a YouTube sensation. The episode also explores Petter's strategic decision to create content aimed at demystifying aviation and overcoming the fear of flying, all while balancing family life and exploring new ventures. Tune in for an insightful and inspiring conversation about passion, perseverance, and achieving one's dreams.
The Flight Pod's Instagram www.instagram.com/theflightpoduk/
The Flight Pod Website www.theflightpod.com
Petter Hörnfeldt
Mentour Pilot You Tube Channel www.youtube.com/@MentourPilot
Mentour Now! You Tube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@MentourNow
Mentour Pilot Instagram www.instagram.com/mentour_pilot/
Captain Speaking - An Aviation Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/captains-speaking-an-aviation-podcast/id1818119776
00:00 Introduction to the Fly Pod
00:20 Petter Hörnfeldt Early Inspiration
01:28 First Flight Experience
03:08 Pursuing the Dream
04:00 Government Sponsored Program
06:40 Military Service and Further Training
16:49 Starting a Career at Ryanair
18:42 Becoming a Captain and Instructor
22:36 Moving to Spain and Family Life
23:17 Starting a YouTube Channel
28:22 The Reality of Being a YouTuber
29:20 Balancing Aviation and Personal Life
30:24 Concorde: The Pinnacle of Aviation
32:45 Modern Aircraft and Future Innovations
38:11 Creating Engaging YouTube Content
44:33 The Importance of Inci dents in Aviation Safety
46:10 The Journey of Mentour Pilot and Mentour Now
47:54 The Challenges and Rewards of YouTube
52:47 Perfect Flying Experiences 56:17 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
[00:00:05] Michael Arron : Welcome to The Flight Pod, exploring the lives and journeys of the most influential people in aviation and travel. I'm your host, Michael Arron Aaron, and on this episode we feature airline pilot turn YouTuber Petter Hörnfeldt, whose channel mentor Pilot has over 2.2 million subscribers. I spoke with him about how his father's desire to learn to fly later inspired patter to pursue a career as a pilot.
[00:00:28] Petter Hörnfeldt: So my dad was a, uh, a regional manager for an insurance firm in Northern Sweden and Northern Sweden is very big, right?
[00:00:38] Petter Hörnfeldt: It's very little people, but it's very, very big. So he would be driving around. With his car up to some of these minor cities. And, uh, he figured, you know, it would be great if I could actually fly when the weather is good. So he got himself a private pilot license when I was around 12, 13 years old. [00:01:00] So I, I, I, you know, I, I went with him up to when he was doing his training and I thought it was cool.
[00:01:06] Petter Hörnfeldt: And, you know, but as you would, when you're a 12 year old and you see aircraft, like you think it's cool, it's not much more than that. But I, I've, I'd ended up going out flying with him a little bit and when he was going on these trips, I would be with him. And so I started looking through the, uh, the material, the planning material and stuff started helping him navigate was actually, you know, flying with him.
[00:01:26] Petter Hörnfeldt: And of course. You know, you don't have to do that very often in order for the bug to really start to Start entering your mind, but then um, what what really really kind of sealed the deal was a um, Was a present I got for my 14th birthday by my parents where they they knew that this His interest had started to grow.
[00:01:47] Petter Hörnfeldt: So they gave me a test lesson with his flight instructor, Mats, which, which I knew a little bit already. So, um, we went out on this gorgeous September evening. Um, [00:02:00] not a whisper of movement in the air, just me, a Cessna 172, him and my dad in the backseat. And, um, we, we went out flying over the local city on just week where I'm from, did a couple of turns over the city and then went up to my, um, to my birth.
[00:02:16] Petter Hörnfeldt: Place, which is up into the boonies in the Sweden, like this very little people there. And then, uh, when we'd been flying for about 45 minutes or so, then we, we started heading towards the airport again and I thought, all right, so that's it. Then he was going to take over controls and he's going to land.
[00:02:32] Petter Hörnfeldt: And we're going to talk about this afterwards and stuff, but he didn't being the seasoned flight instructor. He was, he was just talking to me. He just kind of patted me through. Cool. The approach and okay. So now you take down flaps, take off a little bit of thrust or a little bit of power propeller, um, start pushing down a little bit, you know, aim towards those markings there and I just, and he just patted me through the entire landing down on the ground.
[00:02:56] Petter Hörnfeldt: He did not touch the controls. And of course then, [00:03:00] then it was over like that. That was, that was it. And I knew. And I told my, my dad on the way home, like, okay, now I know what I'm going to do. And I was 14, which is, um, I cannot overemphasize how important it is to have a goal at that age, like, because when you're 14, you can do anything.
[00:03:20] Petter Hörnfeldt: There's, there's nothing that is too hard, too high, too far away. Like you, you can, you can literally spend every single ounce of your spare capacity on one single target, which is what I did. So I, uh, I wasn't, I was an average student, you know, not smarter or stupider than anyone else, but the goal meant that I knew that I needed to get the best possible grades I could possibly get.
[00:03:46] Petter Hörnfeldt: So I started working my ass off and I, uh, I spent time in school. I increased my grades. So I knew that there was a government sponsored program available in Sweden, but there was only 30 spots available in the [00:04:00] entire country. And I knew that they were taking people in based on grades. So I studied until I had a perfect score when I did my first year in senior high, which is like, well, junior college, the equivalent, um, I had a perfect score.
[00:04:16] Petter Hörnfeldt: So I knew that I was going to be invited into the tests. Which I subsequently was.
[00:04:22] Michael Arron : Amazing. And, uh, just that focus. I mean, I also kind of relate that when you're doing the ATPLs for the first time in my life, when you're at school and you don't really necessarily have a goal, how I felt, but then kind of going into ATPLs where it was something for the first time that I studied for something for me.
[00:04:38] Michael Arron : The dedication and the hours that I put in were immense.
[00:04:44] Petter Hörnfeldt: Yeah. And the, the thing would, the thing would having a goal, no matter what the goal is. And in my case, it was aviation and someone else's case might be something else, but having a goal in such a young age, it makes life so much easier because you have so many different paths that's open opens up in front of you [00:05:00] when you're, you know, 14, years old, that's when you, you kind of.
[00:05:04] Petter Hörnfeldt: Take the path that will determine the rest of your life. Not only what professional life you're going to have, but normally also what spouse you will meet, you know, everything is going to be determined at, at that young age, potentially. So if you have a goal, you know, like I'm going to reach that spot, then you know, exactly what parts to take.
[00:05:23] Petter Hörnfeldt: You know, when to do things and when not to do things, when to say yes and say no. And. Very few people are blessed with that because we also know that being a teenager that that's also when you're least normally when you're least focused. That's when you're kind of like exploring yourself and what you want to do and stuff.
[00:05:41] Petter Hörnfeldt: But if you can, if you can utilize that enormous amount of energy that you have in those years and focus it into one single point, it is so powerful. And that's, that's what I, that's, that's what I noticed. Like I, I brought myself up to there and I managed to get into that government sponsored program, which was of course, um, a game changer [00:06:00] because it, it cost as much to become a pilot back then as it does now, more or less.
[00:06:05] Petter Hörnfeldt: And, uh, so having the government. Backing it up and paying for it was, uh, it was amazing.
[00:06:12] Michael Arron : So how long did that take?
[00:06:15] Petter Hörnfeldt: So that was a combined, I did my normal school work. So upper junior or senior college together with my CPL, um, IR. So that was, it took two years of, of doing that. And then. When I was finished with that first part of it, I had CPL IR, but I did not have ME and I did not have MCC.
[00:06:38] Petter Hörnfeldt: So that was what I was missing. So I did my military service, which was mandatory at the time in Sweden. Um, and that took about a year. And after that, I applied for the second part of the government sponsored program, which was the last bit. And I finished that in 2001, which was not a great time to finish.
[00:06:59] Michael Arron : Not a [00:07:00] good time.
[00:07:02] Petter Hörnfeldt: I lived away from my family, but I lived in a different part of Sweden called Västerås, which is down south from, from where I grew up.
[00:07:08] Petter Hörnfeldt: So how old were you? I was 17 when I started.
[00:07:12] Michael Arron : So that's, quite a big, big jump at that age.
[00:07:15] Michael Arron : Yeah.
[00:07:16] Petter Hörnfeldt: Yeah. So I was, I, I hadn't turned 17 yet. I was 16, 16 when I moved away, um, to live by myself for the first time. And I was, I was tough. It is rough to do that at that age. But again, Since there was, since this was the kind of culmination of, of my efforts since I had been working since I was 14. So for two and a half, almost three years, I singularly focused against achieving this and I now did it.
[00:07:42] Petter Hörnfeldt: It, um, it, it felt amazing and, and I was, all of a sudden I was surrounded by people who had the same passion as well. And we were living, breathing, eating, um, aviation. So that, that was all it was about. And on top of that, when you put , when you put together people based on [00:08:00] their grades, you're basically taking the 30 people who are into aviation with the best possible grades in the country.
[00:08:07] Petter Hörnfeldt: And you, you do psychological testing of them. You do you like, they did everything they could in order to find the most, in their view, suitable candidates. Which meant that the, the amount of people like the, the, the people that I was there, we were so smart. I don't know, it was so hard to keep up with it.
[00:08:24] Petter Hörnfeldt: I understand. I understand
[00:08:25] Michael Arron : that, that feeling. Yeah, I almost, I almost spent the whole, I almost felt the whole time with everything that I was doing, that I was, uh, kind of like a bit of an imposter. Yeah, especially kind of coming into it as a civilian really kind of, you know, going all of a sudden into this kind of commercial training route, especially when I went to Skyborne in Gloucester, whether they're all, they're all cadets that are all, you know, I was probably like one of the last ones that they, they kind of almost are admitting now, um, kind of going down that route because they just can't accommodate anything because of The actual commercial side of things.
[00:08:57] Michael Arron : So I was mixing day to day and I was in kind [00:09:00] of civilian clothes. They were all in uniforms. I would try to dress. I created my own almost uniform, uh, just like black, black, full black out for Robin, just turning up in jeans and t shirts because most of the civilian people that would go through Skyborne, they were all military.
[00:09:14] Michael Arron : So the military converts were, you know, they just didn't really kind of have anything to go. They just wanted to do it just to get through to, to go and commercial again. So yeah, for me, it was, uh, I was also surrounded by other people again, a lot younger, you know, 20 years younger than me. as well. So even harder than yourself, I don't know,
[00:09:33] Petter Hörnfeldt: that imposter syndrome is very common, but it's common everywhere.
[00:09:38] Petter Hörnfeldt: I think anywhere where you reach somewhere, what you've been aiming for and idolizing, um, you will feel like an imposter. It's normal. And everyone does it.
[00:09:46] Michael Arron : Yeah. I think you've just got to get over it and just kind of get on. Cause I'll say I kind of hit those points throughout the journey, but then each time I would pass and I would, you know, but it's all to do with determination for me.
[00:09:59] Michael Arron : That's [00:10:00] been the biggest thing is like, it's quite amazing what you can achieve when you put your mind to it. Absolutely.
[00:10:05] Petter Hörnfeldt: And it goes for everything. Anything that you do. It's about grit and determination. Grit is probably the more important part. So determination is important. But if you, if you can't stay with it, if you can't keep with it for potentially for years, it's not likely to be successful.
[00:10:24] Petter Hörnfeldt: But if you can just keep on grinding, no matter what it is, and just try to be that little bit better all the time, you will succeed. It's I, like my life has so far touchwood been, been, um, been, been a show of that because I've tried many, many different things and I have never been the best one at it ever.
[00:10:43] Petter Hörnfeldt: Like there was many people that were smarter than me when I joined this school and there's, there's many people who are better running YouTube channels than I am, but I am persistent. I will continue. I will keep grinding on it until it's successful. I think you [00:11:00]underestimate your achievements. Now the achievement I'm proud of, and I'm like, I'm super proud of where I am right now.
[00:11:06] Petter Hörnfeldt: But, uh, but, but actually this is something I always tell people when they're starting up with anything, you will suck at it. Like you will not be good at it no matter what you do. I think someone famous said that you need 10, 000 hours of anything in order to, to become an expert at it. And it's true. And those 10, 000 hours will take 10, 000 hours, no matter how talented you are.
[00:11:28] Petter Hörnfeldt: So, um, I've taken that to heart and I realized that, you know, starting up a YouTube channel or becoming a pilot or becoming an instructor, especially being an instructor, you will not be great at it. When you start, you will learn as you get along. And for every session that you do, you'll come just that little bit better.
[00:11:46] Petter Hörnfeldt: And as long as you just keep with it, eventually you will be among the top percent. In the world of what you're doing.
[00:11:53] Petter Hörnfeldt: You need to keep evolving. So, uh, and you find that pretty like, you'll know when things start to [00:12:00] be so routine that you know that you can do it without thinking, then at least in my case, that's when it stopped being really interesting. And that's why at least every five years in my career so far, I've had to do a change.
[00:12:14] Petter Hörnfeldt: I've had to switch to do something slightly different. And in the beginning of the airline career, it's pretty easy because you're working first, you're working towards your licenses, and then you're working to get your job. And once you have your job, you're working to become a good first officer. And once you are a good first officer, you want to try to work against understanding what it would be like to be a captain.
[00:12:34] Petter Hörnfeldt: And then once you get your chance to get a job, Command and you passed out. Now you have a road ahead of you to become a good captain, which takes equally long time. And then, you know, apart after that, there's a potential for becoming an instructor and so on. So there's a, there's a natural progression where you do different things and you change constantly.
[00:12:55] Petter Hörnfeldt: But that's why right now I'm on a three year, uh, professional break [00:13:00] from flying and people ask me like, well, how can you do that? I mean, you, you love flying. You love flying, you love aviation, and that's true, but I have been flying commercially short to medium haul in Europe for 21 years, and I felt that what I'm doing right now, where I get to go and see and meet and talk to wonderful people inside of the industry and I get to talk about it and research and explain things and instruct in a completely different way.
[00:13:26] Petter Hörnfeldt: That's actually what really drives me. at the moment. Now, am I going to quick quit flying? No, that's not going to happen, but it will probably come in a different form when it comes back, which something that challenges me again, that I will feel new, new in again, and then we'll see what happens.
[00:13:46] Michael Arron : Yeah, no.
[00:13:47] Michael Arron : So a really brave decision, how do you keep yourself current,
[00:13:51] Petter Hörnfeldt: I don't, it's the single single answer to that. I, I, at the moment, I haven't flown since August last year. [00:14:00] And, um, I am going to, I'm going to go into simulator now to start doing some training because I need to do my, my license proficiency check to keep my rating at the end of May.
[00:14:08] Petter Hörnfeldt: So I will need to start to, to polish it up, but that's just to keep the rating. My idea is to be good at what I do right now. Right. And when it's time for me to go back flying, that will be my main focus. Cause I've noticed that doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, when you, when you start to deviate away from aviation, then, um, you become a less and less good pilot, right?
[00:14:30] Petter Hörnfeldt: And I don't want to be a less and less good pilot. I prefer not being. We're not flying for a while then. And then once it's time to go back, then I go back a hundred percent.
[00:14:42] Michael Arron :
[00:14:42] Michael Arron : I think people underestimate, what the crew in general do, um, you know, even that they're there for your safety, to get you from A to B as safely as possible, , listen to what they say because if there's that moment where you may need them, you know, , they're going to save your lives.
[00:14:57] Petter Hörnfeldt: So absolutely. And remember that [00:15:00] everyone around you are experts at what they are doing, you know, so it's, it's easy to overestimate your own importance in a crew operation, but your cabin crew, your dispatchers, the ground handlers, everyone around you that works in the team to keep everyone safe, they will know better.
[00:15:16] Petter Hörnfeldt: what they're doing than you do. Absolutely. You, you will know how to fly the aircraft and operate the aircraft, but they will know how to load the aircraft or, or how to deal with passengers or, or, you know, calculate the operation around load sheets and things like that. So, and that's, you know, this, now we're coming into how to be a good captain.
[00:15:34] Petter Hörnfeldt: And that really comes down to understanding that to being able to delegate to people, but also being able to set, put your foot down when you see that that's going away. You know, when, because. Similarly, everyone will have their own little, um, their own little agenda, you know, so a turnaround is a great example.
[00:15:52] Petter Hörnfeldt: If you get down and you put the parking brakes on, and now it's time to get the passengers off, get the fuel on, [00:16:00] do the safety checks, get the new passengers on. Get the aircraft ready and then go again, right? That's, that's my, that's what I want to try to achieve in the safest possible way. But each one of these other people will have their specific agenda, which is the loaders want to load or take off the, the, um, baggage and put on the new baggage.
[00:16:17] Petter Hörnfeldt: The dispatcher will want to get the passengers on and off. But then it's not joined up. It's not one holistic pitch picture of what needs to be done. And that's where the captain comes in, at least in, in quick turnarounds. It's like, okay, now we need to work together to get all of this done.
[00:16:34] Petter Hörnfeldt: So that these individual agendas doesn't start to grind up against each other and stop it basically.
[00:16:40] Michael Arron : You went from the training and then did you join Ryan air straight away
[00:16:45] Petter Hörnfeldt: Yeah. Um, so I, I was lucky. Um, I, like I said, in 2001, the industry took a nose dive off to the September 11th attacks.
[00:16:55] Petter Hörnfeldt: It really affected the global aviation industry very, [00:17:00] very harshly. And the only ones that were really doing well at the time were, uh, Reiner, Reiner was expanding. They had just made a huge order of seven to seven, eight hundreds at that point that they needed to fill. So I was lucky enough to be ready with my licenses just when they had started recruiting and were looking for, for pilots to, to get into their up and coming cadet scheme.
[00:17:22] Petter Hörnfeldt: So I managed to get into and start working for them in 2001. And I was hired in 2002.
[00:17:28] Michael Arron : Right. And then at quite a young age, you were then,, moved up the line to captaincy,
[00:17:34] Petter Hörnfeldt: yes. Um, so it could have gone quicker because, because of the way that the industry works is that when you, if you were working in an airline that exists, expanding quickly, well, then there will be opportunities for people that are mature enough to take those opportunities and they will happen at minimum times and minimum time to become a captain is 3000 hours.
[00:17:54] Petter Hörnfeldt: For, um, at least for my company at that point. And, uh, and you get to fly 900 hours a [00:18:00] year. So, you know, you get to that within three, three and a half years or something potentially. But what I chose to do instead was that after about two and a half years, or no, after about two years, I applied to become a synthetic flight instructor.
[00:18:12] Petter Hörnfeldt: So a training first officer. And that slowed the whole process down because as a trainer, you don't fly as much, you, you spend your time in the simulator, which means that you don't reach those 3000 hours. So in my case, that took me, um, I did that for a year and a half. Um, Well, actually I continued doing it forever.
[00:18:31] Petter Hörnfeldt: I haven't stopped since, but, uh, but I, I let it, I concentrated on simulator training for about a year and a half. And then I got up to the, the 3000 hours that was needed. So when I was 25, I got upgraded to become a captain.
[00:18:45] Michael Arron : What were your reasons to go the synthetic training route?
[00:18:49] Petter Hörnfeldt: I needed, like I mentioned before, I needed a change.
[00:18:52] Petter Hörnfeldt: It had to do with me not being very happy with where I was the base I had at the time I didn't feel at home there and [00:19:00] I needed to find some kind of a change and the only thing that I had was either I changed. Career, I changed base or I changed job. And in this case, there was an opportunity to become an instructor and that was changing jobs basically.
[00:19:13] Petter Hörnfeldt: So I applied for that. I didn't have any previous instructor experience at that point. So this was completely new to me, but I took a leap of faith and thought that this, this does sound like a good thing to do, and it has been the single smartest thing that I've done in my career so far,
[00:19:29] Michael Arron : That transition to instructor and having to learn patter it's like learning again.
[00:19:34] Petter Hörnfeldt: Yeah. But in our case, in my case, it was even worse than that, because obviously as a, if you're instructing on a 737, you're not sitting in any seat, you're sitting behind, which means that you have to now control the simulator.
[00:19:47] Petter Hörnfeldt: And. and instruct the people ahead of you and see what mistakes they make and correct them in a timely matter. So becoming, doing instruction as a simulator instructor, that is an [00:20:00] art form, right? It's an absolute art form. You have a very specific amount of time. You know, you normally have four hours, two hours of each more or less for each of the pilots to be pilot flying.
[00:20:12] Petter Hörnfeldt: And then you have to cram in these exercises into that. And you have to cram in those exercises in a way that it feels natural to the students because otherwise they will not get into the learning properly, but you still have to manage the timing, right? So you cannot let it go for. Forever. You have to find a way into an exercise that they feel acceptable, that they learn from while you're controlling this huge 25 million machine around them and creating the illusion of them being in a, an environment where they can actually, you know, where they train, you know, where they can learn something.
[00:20:47] Petter Hörnfeldt: So that was like, for me, it was a completely new, new world. I knew when I got into instructing, I thought that I knew what I was doing because I knew the standard operating [00:21:00] procedure as well. And I kind of knew the technical systems pretty well as well. But when you become an instructor, you realize that there's a whole different level of knowledge needed.
[00:21:08] Petter Hörnfeldt: Like now you don't only need to know it. You need to understand why all of these things are done in that way. And in order to do that. You know, if you're going to explain it to a cadet that's just starting, they're not going to remember it. If you say you're going to take the gear down at four miles.
[00:21:21] Petter Hörnfeldt: Yeah, but why, well, it has to do with this. You need to get this much drag out in order to reduce the speed and go to get the, the flaps out in order to be stabilized by 500 feet. In that case, if you need to be stabilized at a thousand feet, you need to take it out at five miles. And this is why, like there's so much more fundamental knowledge that you need in order to be an instructor.
[00:21:43] Petter Hörnfeldt: I had no idea about that. So it was a, it was a very steep learning curve.
[00:21:47] Michael Arron : Just going back very quickly you weren't happy with your base. Uh, was that just kind of like moving away from Sweden?
[00:21:52] Petter Hörnfeldt: Um, it always is like, it was a very big base where there's a lot of people that was moving in and out and you never really got to know anyone before they disappeared somewhere else. And it [00:22:00] was, it became a little bit unpersonal. So I, um, you know, that's the reason behind it really.
[00:22:06] Petter Hörnfeldt: And that was then the move to Spain. No, that, that was the first move I did was to, um, to move up to our simulator center that was based in East Midlands in the UK. Um, and I was there for a year. Because the contract was for a year and after that I got moved to Sweden to our base that we had outside of Stockholm in a city called Nyköping.
[00:22:29] Petter Hörnfeldt: And I was there, then I was there for a good eight years.
[00:22:32] Michael Arron : Right. Okay. So after that, you then moved to Spain.
[00:22:36] Petter Hörnfeldt: Then I moved to Spain. Yeah. Then I had met my wife. We had had our two sons and my wife is from Girona, which is another one of our bases and the opportunity, because I was a line training captain by then, the opportunity to, um, to apply for a role called base TRE, which is a base type rating examiner.
[00:22:55] Petter Hörnfeldt: The one that's going to be, um, in charge of the training at that particular [00:23:00] base opened up at Girona. So I thought, you know, I'll apply for it. If we get down there, we're going to be close to her family, which is great when you have young kids to have some help and, and also living in Spain is awesome. So, so we, and I managed to get that job.
[00:23:14] Petter Hörnfeldt: So I, we moved down, um, in 2013.
[00:23:17] Michael Arron : So what made you decide to develop an online presence?
[00:23:21] Petter Hörnfeldt: Yeah, so that's interesting. Like, like I said before, I tend to want to do new things every five years.
[00:23:27] Petter Hörnfeldt: And when, when I became a byte based type rating examiner, that's pretty much as high in the hierarchy in the training department as you can go without going into, um, you know, top management levels. So it's still a managerial position, but it's not in the headquarters and going into management was not something I was that interested in.
[00:23:47] Petter Hörnfeldt: So I, I kind of stopped there and I was like, okay, so now I do this and I want to be good at what I do. But once you have reached that and you feel like, okay, now I'm comfortable in this new role. Then you realize that, okay, now there is no [00:24:00] more changes that I can make. And I've always been entrepreneurial.
[00:24:04] Petter Hörnfeldt: I've always been interested in running my own business, developing my own business. And I started looking around to like a case, what, what is happening in the world? How is the world moving? And of course, 2015 social media was on like a meteoric rise. And we realized that every one of us is going to be impacted by social media in one way or another.
[00:24:25] Petter Hörnfeldt: And I realized that I don't know anything about this other than, you know, my Facebook and Instagram account. My philosophy has always been, if you want to learn something, you need to embrace it. You need to immerse yourself in it. So I said, all right, um, what do I do? And my wife said, well, you have way too much time.
[00:24:43] Petter Hörnfeldt: You like listening to your own voice. So why don't you just start a YouTube channel? So that's what I did. I started off a YouTube channel, which is basically like we are sitting now in front of an iMac. No bells and whistles, no sound effects, no graphics, not even proper sound. And [00:25:00] I just sat down and I was like, okay, so what am I going to talk about on my YouTube channel?
[00:25:03] Petter Hörnfeldt: Well, I'll talk about the things that I know. I am a senior type rating. instructor and examiner line training captain on the 737. There's bound to be not too few or not too many of those out on the internet that is willing to talk about what your day to day job is. And at the same time, I had also noticed that when I was out looking through social media, That there was a very vibrant community of pilots on you or on, on the web.
[00:25:34] Petter Hörnfeldt: But they tended to be there anytime that they were divided into two groups. Basically, it was the people who wanted to become pilots that were like, like I was, I would just. You know, yearning to get into the industry and understanding everything that they could about it. That was one group. And the other group were the professionals who only came to the internet to moan and complain and say how everything sucked and how their airline sucked and their flight school sucked and [00:26:00] everything sucked.
[00:26:01] Petter Hörnfeldt: And it just, for me, that was bizarre. Because it was such a disconnect between what I felt myself who loved my job and the love the airline I was working for and, and everything about it. And what I could see that the other professionals were saying online. And of course, as a, as a cadet coming in, you know, going into peep room or any of those forums, like, Oh, how is it like to work in British airways?
[00:26:24] Petter Hörnfeldt: And you get like, Oh, shite, it's, uh, you know, I get up every morning and I hate my life. That That is, that is, that is horrible. Like it's, it's really bad. And I tried to figure out why that was. And I realized that the happy pilots, they were not on YouTube. They were not on, on, on social media or on the web at all.
[00:26:43] Petter Hörnfeldt: They were out kite surfing or having barbecues with friends or smiling, laughing, and doing all of the cool things that these pilots that wanted to, or these people who want to become pilots thought that they were. They were not, the only ones that were on the web were the ones that needed a place to vent.
[00:26:59] Petter Hörnfeldt: Which is why [00:27:00] you had that disconnect. So I thought, okay, perfect. Here's an opportunity I can go out and I can start a YouTube channel where I explain both what I think is so fantastic with this job, but also what is not so fantastic, but in a way that is constructive, that is positive and constructive.
[00:27:17] Petter Hörnfeldt: And that has been the lodestar of my YouTube channels from that point onwards, that whatever I say has to be constructive. It has to be positive. As far as it goes. Can be positive so that people feel that watch one of my videos. They will come out of there. They will learn something and they would have understood something that they didn't understand before.
[00:27:37] Petter Hörnfeldt: So that's what I did.
[00:27:38] Michael Arron : Did you ever expect it to take off? Sorry, pardon the pun. In the way that it's done?
[00:27:44] Petter Hörnfeldt: No, no. And I don't think anyone does that. There are two types of YouTubers. Okay, there are the people who start youtube channels because they want to become famous and they want to become a youtuber and then there are the people who have a passion for whatever it is that [00:28:00] they're doing woodturning, uh, masonry, whatever it might be and they start a youtube channel to explain their passion and the people who start their their youtube channels to explain their passions.
[00:28:13] Petter Hörnfeldt: They don't go into it with the, with the thought of becoming big world famous, they just want to explain what they love in the best possible way. And that's what I did. And I also have a firm belief that that's also the only way to really become successful, because you need to be passionate about what you do, because it's a grind.
[00:28:31] Petter Hörnfeldt: Being a YouTuber is not easy and it will not, you will not earn any money for the first year, two years, maybe, maybe during the second year, you'll be able to afford a cup of coffee on your YouTube account every month. You know, it's not, it's not instant fame. It's not instant money. It's, it's hard work if you want to do it well, which is why you need to love what you're talking about. Basically when you feel that you're in charge of your own life, you tend to feel happy.
[00:28:58] Speaker 2: Yeah,
[00:28:59] Petter Hörnfeldt: right. You're [00:29:00] doing something that you're reasonably happy with because God knows that it's not all bells and whistles. Like it's not all smiles and roses. No matter what job you get, you are going to have parts of it that you do not enjoy. But if you feel at the end of the day that you are in charge of your own destiny and what you're doing and your time, then you are going to be reasonably happy with it.
[00:29:20] Petter Hörnfeldt: And, and I, I really, I really think that now bringing that into the airline businesses, of course, that you will be told what to do and when to do it. Because you're following a roster and the aircraft needs to be going from A to B on those specific times. So there is very little flexibility when it comes to that.
[00:29:37] Petter Hörnfeldt: Um, which makes it even more important to when you have this off days, which are more than what normal people get on a normal Monday to Friday roster, but then you go out hiking, you take your kids doing something, or you're involved in sports or, or you do something because the pure luxury with aviation, with being a pilot.
[00:29:59] Petter Hörnfeldt: One of the [00:30:00] biggest luxuries that no one talks about is that when you've parked that aircraft on the stand and you've shut down the engine and you've done the shutdown checklist and you've filed your paperwork, that's it. Yeah. You can just leave it. You don't have to think a second about it until you get to the crew room before your next duty.
[00:30:18] Petter Hörnfeldt: While in many other, or in most other occupations, it will linger. In the back of your head.
[00:30:24] Michael Arron : Your most viewed video had over 13. 3 million views and apologies if that's incorrect. That's probably, I don't follow it, but the real, real story about the crash that killed Concorde. Um, did you ever get to fly on Concorde?
[00:30:40] Michael Arron : Yeah. I saw it, I saw it
[00:30:43] Petter Hörnfeldt: in the air, but I did not get to fly it. Oh,
[00:30:44] Michael Arron : you actually saw it in the air as well?
[00:30:46] Petter Hörnfeldt: Yeah, um, because I started just before they, they finished down operation.
[00:30:50] Michael Arron : Right. Okay. What's your favorite aircraft?
[00:30:53] Petter Hörnfeldt: Concorde is for anyone who's an avgeek, the Concorde is, is it, it's so beautiful. That's the [00:31:00] thing, you know, when it's flying when it's in its high speed configuration, it just, it just looks stunning. And I also know from from all of the research that I've done, the incredible engineering that went into it with a very limited Computational resources that they had.
[00:31:19] Petter Hörnfeldt: It's, it's, it's a feat of engineering. Now, is it a feat of green engineering? No, no, it's not noisy and stuff, but it's just, it represented something that, that I think a lot of app geeks have. as the kind of, you know, the Shangri La of, of, uh, of aviation. It represented when, when aviation was at the very forefront of the technology and, and people were bold and they tried stuff and they succeeded.
[00:31:52] Petter Hörnfeldt: You know, it's kind of like the moon landings, you know, that, that type of, of, of feeling of positive, like we're going somewhere, we're trying something new. [00:32:00] We want to, to bring society forward. That's what Concord represents, at least to me, that it's, it's like the pinnacle of, of what we, as a race we're doing when before it became looking at apps on your phone, you know?
[00:32:17] Michael Arron : Absolutely. I mean, it blows my mind now just to, we're, we're lucky that we've got it, uh, beautifully housed in Manchester. So I'm not sure whether you've ever actually done the Concord experience and done the, uh, Talk fascinating.
[00:32:29] Petter Hörnfeldt: I was at, I was at the, uh, pal career Live, um, when I was in Manchester. And so they do it in the room inside?
[00:32:37] Petter Hörnfeldt: Yes. With the, with in the Concord. So I was up in, I was in the cockpit and stuff. I mean, it , it's obviously, it, it's, I, it's, it's awesome. Now, when it comes to other favorite aircraft, I am, I am also in awe of the newest ones that have come out, the, the Airbus A three 50, the 7, 8 7, I think. From an ergonometry point of view, when you're looking into the cockpit, it's like looking into [00:33:00] the next generation, into the future, especially when you come from the 737 that I've been flying.
[00:33:04] Petter Hörnfeldt: Um, so I, I, I love those as well. And what they represent. I also think that the Airbus A220 is, is a, is an amazing aircraft that most people don't realize how groundbreaking it actually is. Um, so we are going somewhere. Like we, we are definitely moving somewhere, which is really highly impressive, but Concord is Concord.
[00:33:26] Michael Arron : But, but not quicker. No. Unless Boomer and some of the other, ideas kind of develop.
[00:33:33] Petter Hörnfeldt: Boom. I, I did a video on that a few, like a while back. They might well surprise us and I hope they do. Um, but it is, doesn't the way that they contracted out the, the engine manufacturing to a virtually unknown firm now as well, doesn't bode well when you're going into that type of operation, at least in my
[00:33:56] Michael Arron : view, I can understand Rolls Royce not wanting to maybe go back there.
[00:33:59] Michael Arron : [00:34:00] So
[00:34:00] Petter Hörnfeldt: maybe, but that's the thing. They, they, it was like, it was like when the Concorde was built, right. And the, and then the Americans wanted to do the Concorde competitor, the SST. It's pretty similar because the, the people who knew what they were talking about, then the people who were doing, um, supersonic jets, supersonic fighter jets, they basically like they pulled back and they said, well, we can do this.
[00:34:25] Petter Hörnfeldt: It's a smaller one that goes in pretty much the same speed. And then Boeing came out and was like, we are going to do it twice as big. And it's going to go two times faster than the Concorde. And they got the contract, but they didn't know what they were doing. And they almost went bankrupt doing it.
[00:34:39] Petter Hörnfeldt: Because like, you know, there's, there's physics involved, there's certain things that you cannot get around and that's probably, that's why I'm a little bit skeptical when people like Rolls Royce, for example, are saying that, no, we're not going to go in, we're not going to continue working on this project because they know what it's like to do the Concorde engines, you know.
[00:34:58] Petter Hörnfeldt: And these [00:35:00] new guys that are working for, for boom, as far as I know, I haven't got that type of experience that way. They're, they're very experienced in other fields though.
[00:35:07] Michael Arron : I'll probably have to edit this out because it'll be, it'll be like the running theme in every single interview I do.
[00:35:12] Michael Arron : But I was very lucky to actually travel on Concord. Um, at a, probably too young an age, uh, I just started to go out with my. Um, and I was probably about 19, 20, uh, the daily mail. Yeah, I've never outdone it. Unfortunately, the daily mail runner full page adverts, um, to celebrate 10 years of British airways being a PLC and they were giving away a hundred seats for 10 pounds return to New York. they flew us on a shuttle down to Heathrow. And then we went in the Concord terminal Concord lounge, um, flew to flew to New York. Um, and back again. And it was like, you know, obviously again, it's just one of those things where changed my life.
[00:35:56] Michael Arron : It stayed with me forever. Um, and it's just that whole thing of like, [00:36:00] basically, you know, for three hours, you're on a very, very small aircraft. You know, people didn't get loads of leg room. You know, it wasn't spacious. It wasn't like business class of first class. But it was just that thing that people, what they will do for time.
[00:36:14] Michael Arron : And I think as time's evolved as well, you know, as we move forward, that's become something more and more important. And this was, this was the whole thing of like, looking at things with the way that we travel now. That wherever you go, so if you're going to Barcelona from Manchester, um, yeah, the flight may only be two hours, you know, two and a half hours.
[00:36:33] Michael Arron : That beginning bit, And that end bit, basically you lose a day and you
[00:36:40] Petter Hörnfeldt: know, so I've been, I've been talking to people in the industry who are going into green airliners and trying to, um, to create battery or a hybrid aircraft. Um, and the idea of them obviously is to cover shorter ranges. because the battery technology is just not there yet to do anything else.
[00:36:59] Petter Hörnfeldt: So they're talking [00:37:00] about well, you know, we can do this short skips in between smaller airports in Scotland, for example, in in Australia, New Zealand, in definitely in Sweden, and Finland and Norway, where we have a lot of travel that goes north, south, very little that goes east, west, and that like on paper that looks great.
[00:37:20] Petter Hörnfeldt: And people have asked me, I've been in on those committed committees and they've been asking like, so, so what do you think? And I said, perfect. However, you are going to have to do something about security scans and stuff on this. Because if you are to get people from a city center out to the airport, through security, wait, and then do a 30 minute flight over to the other city.
[00:37:42] Petter Hörnfeldt: You can never. Never beat the train and the bus. Yeah. As easy as that. So if you, yeah, if you can take a, uh, V tool, like a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft from the city center, that flies you straight out to the apron and then bang into the aircraft and then [00:38:00] away, now we're talking and you do the, the security scan in the city or whatever, but do not think that you'll be able to do that same thing on shorter flights.
[00:38:11] Michael Arron : So, , you've defined a specific audience in the content you produce. What is the deciding factor on the subject or the story that you want to discuss?
[00:38:20] Petter Hörnfeldt: So there are different, um, at the moment, I have two channels.
[00:38:23] Petter Hörnfeldt: So I have mentor pilot and mentor now. And, uh, there, there was a very conscious decision to divide it into two channels. And people were asking me, why would you, I mean, you have this big channel, almost 2 million subscribers. Why wouldn't you just have more content on that? And the fact is that the way that YouTube works is that if you are going to have different types of content, you need different types of channels.
[00:38:42] Speaker: Yeah.
[00:38:42] Petter Hörnfeldt: So while what happened to mentor pilot was that it started off as, uh, for, from a pilot to budding pilots, right. People are getting into the industry. Those are the ones that I wanted to reach. And then, uh, as there's just a very limited amount of people, there are [00:39:00]maybe, you know, tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands or millions.
[00:39:03] Petter Hörnfeldt: Um, that will, that, that was able to reach. So what I realized was that what. I have learned over the years being an instructor is to actually break down very complicated things into pretty easy, understandable bite chunks. So I thought, why don't I do that instead? Let's, instead of having this channel for me explaining for someone who wants to become a pilot to become a pilot, let's talk to all of the people out there who have an interest in aviation.
[00:39:29] Petter Hörnfeldt: We just, you know, fleeting interest. They see that metal tube flying across the sky and they're like, I wonder how that works. So that's how I done. Then I kind of switched over the content And I started explaining like, why are the, the aircraft engines flat at the bottom? Um, on the 737, of course. What's that spiral in the engine.
[00:39:50] Petter Hörnfeldt: Things that I know that passengers would have walked past when they were boarding it's like, huh. And then I could, I could explain that pretty easily. And with that, the channel [00:40:00] grew, that's when it started to become semi semi Successful in a, in the word sense, it went from having maybe 20, 000 subscribers to 120, 000 subscribers.
[00:40:09] Petter Hörnfeldt: Um, and that gave me an idea. And I realized that about 30 percent of the human race in the, in the Western world are afraid of flying or uncomfortable with flying. And I realized that most of them, not all of them, but a lot of them are uncomfortable because they don't understand it. And they don't realize the, the way that we work, how safety conscious we are from every step, starting at the aircraft manufacturer, all the way up to the airlines, to the pilots, to the cabin crew, everything is about safety.
[00:40:42] Petter Hörnfeldt: So I thought, okay, so how do I, how do I explain that? I can go out and I can give. facts and figures, right? Uh, it's, you know, this much more safe to fly an aircraft than driving a car, but that doesn't work because it doesn't attach to people. It's just numbers and it doesn't mean anything. What I realized [00:41:00] was that if I start talking about accidents and incidents, the worst case scenarios that has happened in this industry, and I explained just how freaky Those accidents and incidents were, and in the case of incidents, it's, it can be like a chain of events that is five, 10 instances long, and it still doesn't produce an accident, right?
[00:41:23] Petter Hörnfeldt: It's, they still land without anyone being hurt. Accidents, obviously, most of them are older. So you can point to that fact as well, that this happened in the eighties and seventies. And, but even modern ones, you can go through and like, look, here are Why this shouldn't happen. This is why this, in this, this particular instant happened, what actually happens is that people who are afraid of flying watch my videos.
[00:41:46] Petter Hörnfeldt: And a lot of them comes back. It's like, now I feel better because now I understand that an aircraft doesn't just fly along happily. And then all of a sudden falls out of the sky. It requires this insane. chain of events for it to [00:42:00] happen. The holes in the cheese. Yeah. The Swiss cheese model. And people don't realize that we're talking, we're not talking about small Swiss cheese here.
[00:42:08] Petter Hörnfeldt: We're talking about an enormous a hundred meter long Swiss cheese that this little needle needs to thread through in order for it to become an accident. So with that, what happened was that I could suddenly use these horrible accidents as a vehicle to explain things. Right. So I could, if I wanted to, if I wanted to explain to you how the, the, uh, the fuel system worked on an aircraft, like if I did a video about this is how a fuel system works on aircraft, it would not get many views.
[00:42:40] Petter Hörnfeldt: People would only the real, really, really avgeeks would probably watch it. You would probably watch it, my, my patrons, my lovely patron crew would watch it, but not many more. Right. But if you put that same explanation into the story of an accident, all of a sudden, millions of people will watch it. [00:43:00] Because now it is storyline.
[00:43:01] Petter Hörnfeldt: It has a start, it has a body of the story and it has an ending. So people will sit there and they will look through it. And in the case of the Concord that you brought up, that was, there were so many freaky things that happened. And it was so much about the Concord and the way that, that, you know, the speed of the tires, the fact that that little metal thing flung up and started this kind of, you know, supersonic wave going inside of the fuel tank that ruptured the tank, not from the outside, but from the inside.
[00:43:31] Petter Hörnfeldt: Those kinds of things, those details that people just have never heard about, they don't understand, but you can show it. And when you do it inside of a story like that, they will listen to it. So you can
[00:43:41] Michael Arron : educate. Especially the chain of events
[00:43:44] Michael Arron : each thing individually, not a problem, but it's just a catalyst of events. Yeah. And
[00:43:52] Petter Hörnfeldt: it's like that in almost every case, like I've come across a few cases where, where it comes down to just pure [00:44:00] incompetence, but they're very rare.
[00:44:02] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[00:44:02] Petter Hörnfeldt: In most cases, it's, it's something that triggers something that triggers something that triggers a weakness in a training module that happened two years ago.
[00:44:10] Petter Hörnfeldt: That like there's, like you said, it, you can almost, it almost seems preordained. Like it's, it's so many weird coincidences that comes together for one of these things to happen. So that's what makes people watch it, see these sometimes horrible accidents and still feel like, yeah, now it feels better, which is supremely weird, but actually kind of makes sense.
[00:44:33] Petter Hörnfeldt: Incidents happen all the time, but it's those incidents that keeps the industry on its toes.
[00:44:39] Petter Hörnfeldt: It's those incidents are a precursor of an accident, right? So in many cases, if you start to see a lot of incidents happening. In the same area, then that's when the industry needs to kind of come together and like, okay, we need to do something quickly. Now, a good example is all of those, uh, runway incursions.
[00:44:59] Petter Hörnfeldt: The all of, [00:45:00] of last year and the year before that there's been, you know, a load loads and loads of reports about runway incursions, aircraft crossing runways when someone else has taken off, so on and so on. And then we had the Haneda accident that happened, runway incursion, right? So loads and loads and loads and loads of these things happening worldwide.
[00:45:21] Petter Hörnfeldt: And then you have the accident happening. And we knew, we knew like that, that the industry had already started to react to it. So like, okay, we need to do something about this, but it was too late. So, um, incidents will continue to happen. They must continue to happen actually for us to make sure that the industry is as safe as it is.
[00:45:39] Petter Hörnfeldt: And those in those incidents are normally almost as interesting to listen to, but sometimes even more interesting than an accident.
[00:45:47] Michael Arron : It's always been the case that it takes an event. To make the industry safer,
[00:45:52] Petter Hörnfeldt: that's why we, why we are where we are. Like we have probably 10 times, if not a hundred or a thousand times more flights [00:46:00] now than in the seventies and the amount of accidents have gone down.
[00:46:05] Petter Hörnfeldt: enormously. So you have many, many, many more flights and much, much, much less incidents. And that's because of that. Now getting back to what we talked about, I started Mentor now because I realized that I still wanted to do the freaky stuff. I still wanted to do the like highly nerdy industry things about aviation or going into a specific aircraft type and talk only about that.
[00:46:25] Petter Hörnfeldt: And I realized that there is a new audience for that. It's much smaller, but it's still there. And so I created Mentor now. For that audience so that I can sit and talk about what happens to Boeing and why does Airbus do this and Why does a uh an MD 80 not have direct controls over its elevators, you know These kind of things I can do there and the interesting thing is that even though it's smaller than Mentor Pilot It's still getting hundreds of thousands of views now You know, so, and you enjoy it and I enjoy it.
[00:46:55] Petter Hörnfeldt: I enjoy doing it. Uh, and I can create it and I have this, this, this wonderful [00:47:00] team with researchers that are helping me to research it. So we come up with an idea and then they will dig into every publication there is out there and find all the facts. And then we build a story together and we create it on a weekly basis.
[00:47:12] Petter Hörnfeldt: Mind you, it's a lot of stuff.
[00:47:14] Michael Arron : I was just going to say, how long does it take you from coming up with an idea to. Crafting it. So you say you can, you're doing them on a weekly basis.
[00:47:22] Petter Hörnfeldt: So because I have a team, I wouldn't be able to do it at this level without the team. Uh, because I have a team, I do, I can do about two of those a week.
[00:47:31] Petter Hörnfeldt: So I'm releasing one, which means that I can build up a little bit of a, of a buffer so that I can actually take vacations and a mentor pilot takes almost exactly two weeks to create. Right, two, two and a half weeks, depending on how long it is. The one that we're going to release now on, on Saturday is significantly longer than normal.
[00:47:50] Petter Hörnfeldt: It's a significantly bigger event. So that's taken almost four weeks to do.
[00:47:54] Michael Arron : What's the best part of being a YouTuber? Freedom.. What's the worst aspects? [00:48:00]
[00:48:01] Petter Hörnfeldt: Work. Now it's, it's, it's, I work, I get in at nine o'clock and I very rarely leave before eight o'clock in the evening. And I have a family as well.
[00:48:11] Petter Hörnfeldt: So it's, I work more now than I've ever done. Yeah. And it, but the difference is that I can also just go skiing one day. I live in Andorra now we moved from Spain to Andorra in the beginning of the year. And, uh, and I love snowboarding. So now it's about, okay, it's been snowing today. I'm not going to work.
[00:48:30] Petter Hörnfeldt: I'm going to go out and ski instead. And, and I do that and no one can tell me, tell me otherwise.
[00:48:35] Michael Arron : What challenges have you faced, uh, filming content or making content?
[00:48:41] Petter Hörnfeldt: So coming up with good content is always hard, you know, okay, now I'm doing this series about incidents and accidents, but I will have to start to supplement with other type of content as well on mentor pilot eventually, especially if I want to, to go up maybe to a weekly release, which is my goal eventually.
[00:48:57] Petter Hörnfeldt: Um, so sitting and coming up with good [00:49:00] content. In the beginning was really hard, especially when I didn't have a team because then I needed to come up with the content, research it, script it, film it all by myself and edit it. Um, but the good thing with being, with, with going into the YouTube business is that you scale on what you have.
[00:49:18] Petter Hörnfeldt: Right. So you, it's not like a green and you have to buy yourself a storefront and you've put loads of money in and now that money needs to, to work. If you don't make money, you don't invest. So you, you, you know, in the beginning I didn't make any kind of money. So I was sitting in front of my computer and I was editing in my own little pictures that I found and yada, yada, yada.
[00:49:38] Petter Hörnfeldt: And then as you, the money starts to come in through different income streams, like my, my fantastic patron crew that is supporting me, um, AdSense, obviously Corporations with brands, which is hugely important. I don't think people understand how important it is. Um, Then all of a sudden it's like okay now there's a big chunk of money here.
[00:49:57] Petter Hörnfeldt: I can get better lighting I can hire people I [00:50:00] can I can create these things and it becomes better and cooler, but you don't really go Like you don't start from a negative, you start from zero and then you build yourself up. So it's not, you don't, if, if I would start to see that the income streams would drop off, I will just slim it down again.
[00:50:18] Petter Hörnfeldt: And I wouldn't, wouldn't run the risk of, uh, of, of losing money on it, but it takes, yeah, like I said, three, it probably took me three to four years before I was earning something that was even equivalent to a low salary.
[00:50:34] Michael Arron : , um, how do you incorporate the feedback from your viewers to enhance the content?
[00:50:40] Petter Hörnfeldt: So, uh, that was actually easier in the beginning. Because in the beginning you had a small amount of very passionate people that, that came with feedback, but as you get bigger, it becomes unmanageable. The feedback becomes unmanageable. So you, you, you know, if I release a video now, uh, you get. I don't know, [00:51:00] let's have a look actually, how many comments that I've had on my latest Metro Pilot video, but, but it's going to be in the thousands,
[00:51:07] Petter Hörnfeldt: yeah, so the latest video I released, uh, one and a half week ago, it's got 3000, um, comments on it, and the one before that, Three, two, three and a half thousand. So there's literally on a daily basis, there's probably a couple of hundred to a thousand comments coming in. And so you, you can't really use that.
[00:51:30] Petter Hörnfeldt: That's the thing, because a lot of people come in the early days. Yeah. In the early days you could, now you can't from YouTube, which is why I, again, I have my patron crew because my patron crew is basically the ones that I've watched my channel and said, I want to support this creator. I think that what he or she is doing is so good that I want to financially support it with a euro a month, 10 euros a month, or even more than that.
[00:51:52] Petter Hörnfeldt: But something like, I'm giving not to receive, not to get, Appreciation of stuff just to support the work, which means that I [00:52:00] know that they're passionate about what we do So I use my patreon crew and what I do is that my patreon crew gets to preview my videos So they see it before anyone else And then they comment to go in and comment and they say like I didn't understand this or I found this and this is great And you know and from that I can I can then go in and re edit videos, which I do Wow.
[00:52:20] Petter Hörnfeldt: Regularly. So they're, they're kind of the quality control of the, of the channel. We do our own review in the team, then I give it to Patreons will come with further and it's hundreds of people. So they will come in and they will give their viewpoint on it and hopefully that will kind of stop anything that, that is at least a major issue with the video.
[00:52:40] Michael Arron : Wow. Well, it's a, it's certainly making amazing content. So thank you. No, it really is. It's, it's, it's just beautifully produced. Can you name three things that you would create that would create the perfect flying experience?
[00:52:56] Petter Hörnfeldt: Okay. So from a, from a pilot perspective, as close to a [00:53:00] perfect flight as I've done was a delivery flight of a new 737 from Seattle.
[00:53:04] Petter Hörnfeldt: Um, because I, I, I ended up, it was, it was the whole thing. It was traveling there. It was seeing the factory. It was picking up an aircraft that you have to pull off the plastic almost from the screens on. And then I was flying together with a friend of mine. Like another captain that was, that was, that, that I'd knew for years.
[00:53:22] Petter Hörnfeldt: So it was, it was us flying an empty 737 across Greenland into Northern Lights and then landing after like a 10 hour flight. It's over 10 hour flight. Um, for me, that was an almost religious experience. Like that was super, super cool. Uh, obviously there's many, many dimensions of that. The company giving that as a kind of a.
[00:53:47] Petter Hörnfeldt: You know, here you go, we think that you've earned to do this, which is fantastic. And then this, that experience. So from that, that's one of the coolest things that I've done in my career. Um, when
[00:53:58] Michael Arron : you're flying [00:54:00] as a passenger,
[00:54:01] Petter Hörnfeldt: as a flying, as a passenger, I've recently started trying flying business class.
[00:54:05] Petter Hörnfeldt: Um, and I have to say that I don't think I will ever be able to come back.
[00:54:11] Michael Arron : Once you've gone left, you can't go right.
[00:54:13] Petter Hörnfeldt: No, it's well, obviously I can't afford it. That's helped, but it just means that I've traveled less. I think, no, it's, um, the, and I've tried to distill down why it is, it is so it's such a different experience and it comes down to that whole pre that, you know, the pre flight experience throughout the entire flight, the fact that you go to a launch and you sit down and you have a cup of coffee and it feels very, it feels like a treat in itself.
[00:54:39] Petter Hörnfeldt: You know, that you, that you, you, you're not stressing. You're not surrounded by, by people who are super stressed. You're sitting, chilling, and then they tell you, and you walk out and you just go on board the aircraft and you sit down and you don't have to fight for putting your hand luggage up. You have your hand luggage storage.
[00:54:55] Petter Hörnfeldt: So you just put that up, you sit down, someone comes to give you a glass of champagne [00:55:00] and you sit and you chill while all of the, the rest, which we Think about when we're, uh, when we're flying, which is like running to find your seat, uh, fighting to, to get the, the middle hand rest, all of those things, they just don't appear.
[00:55:16] Petter Hörnfeldt: And then the same thing as you get off. Right. And you just off and you go where you're supposed to. It shows that the industry knows how to create a fantastic experience. I actually, when I've, when I've flown business class so far, um, I've done it. Yeah. And it's been something that has increased the value of that travel experience for me.
[00:55:39] Petter Hörnfeldt: As in, I've looked forward to the trip specifically, and then I've gone on vacation and I've enjoyed that, but when the vacation is over, I'm still looking forward to the trip back. And that you cannot do, at least not with the way that normal economy travel [00:56:00] looks like. Right now. So I, I think that because everything is cyclical, I think that we will be going back to the equivalent of, these flight carriers. that will fly people in kind of semi business class, probably premium economy is what we're looking at for the future.
[00:56:17] Michael Arron : Was Petter Hörnfeldt host of one of the most successful aviation YouTube channels, original music by mood mode. This episode was produced and edited by Stewart Anthony. I'm Michael Arron and you've been listening to The Flight Pod.
[00:56:32] Michael Arron : If you've enjoyed this episode of The Flight Pod, please be sure to subscribe and leave us a review. It really helps us reach more listeners. You can follow Petter on Instagram at Mentor on the score pilot and check out his YouTube channel's, mentor, pilot, and mentor now, as well as his podcast show Captain speaking for more great content.
[00:56:51] Michael Arron : And don't forget to follow us on Instagram at the Flightpod uk, where you can send us a DM with your questions, your comments or feedback as we'd love to hear from you. [00:57:00] Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time on The Flight Pod.