Alan joined British Rail in 1988 in the train enquiry office and soon moved on to the ticket office and then became a train announcer. In this job he became interested in signalling and applied to go to Signalling School at Crewe. He joined the team in Reading Panel in 1990 and stayed until 1995 when he accepted a temporary post at 125 House in Swindon. He returned to the Reading area in 1996 as a relief manager covering the Mobile Operations Manager and Shift Performance Manager posts. In 1998 he left again for a year of unpaid leave during which time he travelled round the world via South Africa, Nepal, Australia, New Zealand and Alaska. During this period, his relief manager's post was withdrawn and so he returned to a job as a signalman once more. By now though, he had already decided his career path lay elsewhere so he finally left the railway in 2001 to start training to become a commercial pilot. After September 11th 2001, jobs for new pilots were hard to come by and so it would be almost three years before Alan got a lucky break and secured his first flying job. He now flies for bmi on the Airbus A319/20/21 fleet on their domestic and European routes based at London Heathrow.