Flying Alone is the life story of the author telling us about her adventures as a pilot in the world of the smaller freight air charters in the USA. She describes in an open and often emotional way her struggles in gathering enough flying hours after earning her commercial license in order to achieve a place in the cockpit of a major airline as a pilot. That road is not without the necessary setbacks and personal insecurities from her training to become a ppl pilot until her position as a plane captain on a small commercial flight with passengers and freight.
She experiences not only several confrontations with colleagues and managers but also with the elements and faltering technics during her flights. Many of those stories are well known with the pilots amongst us like encountering bad weather conditions unprepared or fuel problems due to wrong calculations or forced re routings.
Will I get there or not is what every general aviation pilot once in a while will experience. The readers of this book with a pilot license will recognize the stories and that is why you sympathize with her adventures in the air with an intense déjà vu feeling. As a red ribbon through her stories there is also her difficult relationship with a fellow pilot which strengthen her insecurity at the expense of her developing personality but at the end she can overcome this by taking a firm decision.
Reading her book it appears that life as a pilot in a small charter company is not easy. Money problems, bad plane maintenance, accidents and confrontations with the management are happening regularly and personal losses of fellow pilots are emotionally difficult. At the end Beth Ruggiero earns a position in the cockpit of a major airline as third officer and with that she achieved her goal. But then fate hits her when a chronical disease strikes up and she has to change her future.
This book is nice and easy reading with several exciting moments in the air and the romantic reader amongst us gets his share when she tells about the problems in her relationship. I bought the book at Amazon as an e-book for a really fair price but it contains no photos or illustrations.
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