Lukas Heim had to fight for this moment for a long time.
The student pilot is currently completing his training
as a commercial pilot.
Today he is flying from Goodyear in Arizona towards the Grand Canyon.
At the European Flight Academy in the US, the 26-year-old is learning
to fly small aircraft together with around 100 other student pilots.
Later, he wants to fly passenger jets for Germany's largest
airline Lufthansa and take passengers to all continents.
We'll be here for another month or so, flying by sight the whole time
with a flight instructor—to prepare ourselves to fly solo,
without an instructor, which is an incredible experience.
And then we'll go into the simulator here to learn
to fly after instrument flight.
About three years ago, things were different.
Lukas had to move out of his apartment in Bremen
on the spur of the moment: During the pandemic,
Lufthansa had stopped training its new pilots.
Aviation had come to a virtual standstill worldwide.
When and whether pilots would be needed again
was completely up in the air.
Lukas' lifelong dream of becoming a pilot seemed to be over.
It's not at all clear that we'll be hired after we've been trained.
That's not a good prospect.
And in the end, our tests wouldn't be recognized in the future.
They couldn't guarantee it.
That's how I understand it.
That means you've worked for a year and a half towards this
goal and you have nothing at all to take with you.
Carolin Boesner also didn't know what would happen.
The Leipzig native was at flight school in the US when she heard that
her training was being put on hold.
She took a job at Amazon to survive.
Her goal was to somehow complete her pilot training,
on her own if necessary.
It's not easy to cope with.
For someone who really wants to do it, it destroys dreams.
At some point, I really want to sit in the cockpit. But in the meantime,
I think you should make the best of the resources you have available
and what paths are open to you.
Today, three years later, she has made it.
Carolin has been flying for the logistics giant DHL for four months.
As a co-pilot, she flies tons of freight from
Leipzig to African or other European destinations.
I sometimes get up and go to work and think to myself
on the way: Cool, you're really doing this now.
And I'm super grateful that my family has helped me
so much and supported me.
I would sometimes do a kind of double-shift: I'd come in
from the late shift, do flight preparation until 2a.m.,
I'd sleep, but get up again at 6 a.m. to drive to
Berlin, to Schönhagen, to take a flying lesson there.
And then drive back home and get to Amazon an hour late for a late shift.
Just after midnight, the logistics hub outside
at Leipzig-Halle Airport comes to life.
Rows and rows of DHL's yellow and red planes are waiting.
Tens of thousands of parcels and packages are sorted
and packed into containers for dispatch right next to the tarmac.
At about 2a.m., they arrive minute-by-minute
at the waiting airplanes.
Most flights take place at night.
You have to like that and be able to cope with it—
as we fly out of here at night.
We reach our destinations during the day: anywhere in Europe,
Africa or the Middle East, at least with the plane I'm flying.
We sleep there during the day and usually fly back via Leipzig
in the evening.
We're in Leipzig briefly and then we're off somewhere else again.
Carolin Boesner is heading to Athens today.
Her Airbus is still empty.
But just like the plane next door, almost 40 tons of freight
will soon fill the hold.
The fact that she is 'only' flying parcels and packages
doesn't bother the pilot at all.
What I fly doesn't matter in the end, the flying is the same.
I do the same approach, the same take-off.
At the end of the day, I just don't have
any passengers to look after.
Cargo doesn't complain.
Cargo doesn't grumble that the food isn't alright.
It doesn't get angry.
I don't have to call the police because of cargo.
In Goodyear, Arizona, Lukas Heim has just returned
from a two-hour training flight.
Before landing, he has to concentrate fully once again—
correctly assessing speed, wind, distance and altitude.
The flight instructor only intervenes if something threatens to go wrong.
But everything works out.
Lukas lands without any problems.
Still, they discuss the entire flight afterwards.
And he practices especially tricky situations
once again in the simulator.
The simulator is less helpful with flight-training itself.
But it's great for training for emergencies.
What can I really do in an emergency?
There are things that you might not want to practice
or demonstrate in-flight.
You can do it here.
It's a big advantage.
Then the next 'mission' awaits, the next flight task.
Lukas checks if the rudder, landing gear, and lights
are working properly— or if anything is damaged.
Sometimes he has to take to the air three times a day.
It's very special.
You think about it every day.
Now that we're getting used to flying, we know
that it's out of the ordinary.
You notice it in the people and in what we do here.
If all goes to plan, Lukas Heim could complete his training
by early 2025—and fly passengers all over the world
from the cockpit of a jet.