“The passion remains, but I’m leaving”: an airline pilot resigns for a very rare reason in his profession

Le pilote de Swiss Airline Yann Woodcook a partagé son choix de démissionner dans une longue publication. Illustration MAXPPP – Vincent Isore

C’est une décision aussi rare que radicale. Un pilote de ligne de la compagnie Swiss Airline a rédigé un long post sur Linkedin pour expliquer pourquoi il quittait son métier passionnant.

He is not tired of being a pilot, nor even tired of the repeated time differences. Yann Woodcook, airline pilot at Swiss Airline, published a long post on LinkedIn on Friday May 3 to explain why he was resigning from his position.

"I’resigned from my job as an airline pilot. I am leaving the captivating world of aeronautics which, since 2011, has allowed me to make a living from my passion. The passion remains but I am leaving, he writes in the preamble.

His departure is motivated by environmental awareness. "I became aware of the scale of the climate catastrophe and the scale of the climate catastrophe. rsquo;collapse of the living", and to add that’he "no longer wishes to be part of a industry contributing significantly to the problem."

Reduce thefts

For Yann Woodcook, the fight against global warming must involve a "massive" flights, even if "we will always need aviation".

In his long LinkedIn publication, he questions the link between travel and aviation, which according to him can be uncorrelated and believes that the proposal "deliberately provocative" of Jean-Marc Jancovici to take the plane four times in his life to reduce the pollution linked to his mobility is "interesting and lucid to say the least.

With his resignation, Yann Woodcook clarifies that he does not intend to act in this way to directly combat the climate catastrophe. I'm not naive, I will be replaced.

While he does not at any time mention the salary he is giving up by giving up his position as an airline pilot, he recognizes that he is part of the category of privileged people who can afford reducing working time to follow training at the same time. He therefore made the choice to turn to a profession in law, his other passion, in order to use his "skills to continue my fight for a fairer world and for defense of causes for which it is, in this unequal world, vital to fight.