Job-seeker Jade has high hopes of a career with Cathay Pacific

Graduate Jade Telford-Simms has gone to the other side of the world to follow her dream of a high-flying career.

Would-be pilot Jade, 22, had her hopes of becoming an RAF pilot dashed by Armed Forces’ spending cuts so she’s headed to New Zealand to try her luck there.

A qualified glider instructor, Jade plans to teach in Christchurch with the ultimate aim of seeking residency and joining the New Zealand Air Force.

She’s also got her fingers crossed that an interview with Cathay Pacific might lead to a job.

Jade, who lived in Bennetthorpe and is a former pupil of The McAuley Catholic High School, decided to try her luck abroad after failing to get a job at home, despite having a good degree from a top university and work experience.

Hard-working Jade had juggled her studies in philosophy and theology at the University of London with a job as an assistant manager of a pub and keeping up her flying.

Before she flew off this month Jade said: “I kept flying all the way through university, juggling it with my studies and my job. I wonder how I fitted it all in now.

“But it has been hard to find work. I’ve got a lot of experience, but I can’t even get a bar job.

“Then I thought if the RAF aren’t recruiting pilots at the moment I would try something completely different.

“I know people in New Zealand from my time working in London and it will be a fantastic change of scenery.

“It is cheaper to fly a glider out there and there is a working holiday scheme which means I will be able to work.”

Jade has been flying gliders solo since she was a 17-year-old air cadet and qualified as an instructor the following year, teaching fellow cadets at Syerston Airfield, near Newark.

She said: “I’ve always been fascinated with anything that can fly. My grandfather used to keep birds of prey and they fascinated me.

Jade worked for months in a Doncaster call centre to fund her new life in New Zealand.

Source: Thornegazette.co.uk, Sunday 28th August 2011