Margrit Waltz
‘I delivered three aircraft and a baby...’
After 900 transatlantic crossings and 25,000 flight hours, ferry pilot Margrit Waltz is almost ready to retire. But she isn't decending just yet. Words: Megan Kelly
Stepping down: Margrit Waltz plans to leave her role as Daher ferry pilot.
LOGGING 25,000 FLIGHT hours is no easy feat, but Margrit Waltz, ferry pilot for Daher, has achieved that and then some.
“In May ’87, I delivered three aircraft and a baby,” she tells Corporate Jet Investor (CJI). “I flew nine months pregnant, had a baby and a week later I was back in the cockpit. A guy couldn’t do that even if he tried.”
Waltz’s job requires a drop-of-the-hat attitude to scheduling. Although she tries to incorporate as much routine as possible, she also likes the freedom that being a ferry pilot affords her.
Typically, when Waltz receives a request to deliver a Daher TBM to a client, she books a ticket and a hotel and heads off to the factory in Tarbes, southern France. If she’s lucky, she’ll get a couple weeks’ notice, but sometimes it could be a 24-hour rush. From Tarbes, most aircraft are delivered to the US, but can also head to Australia or South Africa.
Waltz usually aims to take off around noon, and heads to Wick, Scotland, which she recently favours as “a bit of an underdog” airport. “It’s like a family-run business and they’re very nice people,” she says. “I like to support them instead of the big corporate FBO.” Once there, Waltz has “a gossip, a cup of tea and a KitKat bar” with the staff, who she says are some of her closest friends. Then, she takes off again for Iceland, where weather-depending she will make a refuelling stop. Then it’s the final leg of her journey, where she snacks on fizzy Haribo sweets to keep her energy levels high before finally delivering the aircraft.
“You try to have a normal day, but sometimes it just doesn’t work,” she says. “My friends at home don’t always understand the job. It’s like you can never really plan.”
Despite being one of the few women ferry pilots when she started out in the 1970s, Waltz never let exclusion or sexist remarks phase her. It took about seven years to really break through and be accepted by her male counterparts. She recalls asking handling agents for weather folders and being told to “wait for the pilot”. “I would say, ‘well we might be waiting a while because there’s nobody else on board’.” Waltz adds: “You take it, but you give it back. I was convinced that if I was good enough, I’d eventually get accepted or recognised.”
Recognised as one of the world’s most experienced ferry pilots, German-born Waltz recently celebrated her 900th transatlantic flight, receiving a traditional water salute along with a shower of compliments from industry peers. When Waltz speaks to CJI, she has just arrived in Miami, after leaving Tarbes just a few days before. Having turned 65 in February, she is set to retire in December and spend much moretime with her husband, kids, grandchildren and beloved rescue dogs; or at least that’s the plan. But she’s showing no signs of slowing down yet. “My licence is still good until November 2023, so I will still do a little bit of back up work,” she says.
With such a high number of flights, and most of them solo, you would expect some scary moments. But not for Waltz. “No, for me there is never the outcome that I might die. There is no time to be afraid,” she says. “In over 25,000 hours there were a couple of flights that didn’t go quite so smoothly. But if you have the training and the mentality, maybe the nerves or something, you almost go into autopilot yourself.” Routine is what helps her get into this “autopilot” mode. “You go through procedures and there is always a way of figuring it out.”
While she is looking forward to some time on the ground, she will miss the buzz of the industry and the friends she has made along her route. “A big excitement in my job is that you are always right at the beginning of any new development in aircraft,” she says. “The average pilot will never get all the new toys. I’m very privileged to feel the trust that people have put in me along the way.”