NAfter more than 20 years in the aviation industry, Gabriele Burg has become accustomed to the ups and downs of work and life.but Corona It’s something else after all. Now, when she talks about her first impression of her new job, she still seems to be as ecstatic as a young professional: “I just immerse myself in an exciting new world,” she said “I’m very excited that I can meet a lot there to build common ground with my previous professional world.”
Berg is one of the employees who restarted in Germany during the pandemic.As an A-320 pilot GermanwingsAs a former subsidiary of German Lufthansa, she quickly felt the economic impact of the new crown crisis: First, the bookings of tourists and business travelers in her team dropped sharply. Then her employer closed most of the passenger fleet for several months and sent many employees to short-term jobs.
It’s time to try new things
In order to avoid possible loss of work, Berg made a brave decision: within a few months to transfer her job from the runway to the railway, and served as a train driver. German train Apply. “I feel that my best years in the aviation industry have passed, and now is the time to try new things,” said a Saarland native who was born in the small town of Urexweiler. She didn’t wait long: in October last year, the 57-year-old applied for training as a tractor driver for long-distance railway transportation because her job was called in official German.
6.30 am on weekdays
Your application is immediately successful. Since March 2020 alone, the German state-owned company has hired approximately 25,000 new employees.These days, Berg’s new professional group is not only because of the branch strike GDL In the eyes of the public. For a long time, train drivers have been urgently needed. Over the years, Burg has proven that it is responsible for managing public transportation and transporting it safely to its destination. Qualifications that are particularly needed in the fast-developing long-distance railway traffic. In addition: among the 19,500 train drivers employed by Deutsche Bahn, the proportion of female employees is only 4.5%. A meager quota, management hopes to increase substantially in the next few years.
“My life as a pilot is very good”
For Burg, it’s not difficult to switch to a new field of work: “I was full of praise for these two professions when I was a little girl,” she said, “but the prospect of being a pilot in a large airline was even better at the time. It’s fascinating.” After a personal interview and a quick acceptance in Berlin, Berg signed a permanent employment contract since July 1. If she passes the theoretical and practical part of the retraining exam, she is expected to drive the ICE series of express trains in the next few months. The theoretical part is about learning important “rules and regulations for safe railway operations”, that is, identifying signals, starting the braking process, or behavior in the event of an accident. This is what it says in the Deutsche Bahn specification. Then I deepened this knowledge in train simulators and many study trips with the coach.
Burg’s entry as a pilot in the 1980s was never as simple as it is now: after graduating from high school, when she decided to train Lufthansa After applying, she immediately gave her a basket. Reason: The so-called privilege of pilot training was previously reserved for male candidates. The German market leader did not officially introduce equal rights in the cockpit until 1988. Although today it is still a classic male domain.
