Carmel reaches new heights

She may have her head in the clouds, but Carmel Falkenberg has her feet firmly planted on the ground when it comes to opportunities for a career in aviation.

A newfound career in aviation is taking Angaston woman Carmel Falkenberg to remarkable new heights – 30,000 feet, to be precise.

Landing a dream job as a Qantas flight attendant has not only been Carmel’s passport to domestic and international travel, it has also been the catalyst for exciting side projects.

A self-confessed nervous flyer, Carmel’s new office in the sky seems impossibly far from her former nine-to-five job as a Barossa Dental nurse. While she was always “intrigued” by the lifestyle opportunities the aviation industry offered, Carmel surprised even herself when she spontaneously applied while travelling around Australia with now finance, Warwick Doecke during a belated gap year in 2015.

“We were up in Newman (WA) in the Pilbara when the job came up and I thought why not?” said Carmel. “I had to fly all the way back to Adelaide for the interview and I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and thought if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.

“I think I had the best interview process of my life – because I was travelling and loving life, I had all the right answers. “I left the room thinking it was the best opportunity I could have given myself.

“Three weeks later I was in Kunanurra when I got the call to say I had the position with Qantas Link. “I gave it my all and I think they recognised I’m a team player.”

But passing the interview process with flying colours was only the tip of the iceberg as Carmel embarked on a rigorous training regime at ground school in Sydney. There, fledgling flight attendants are fast-tracked in theory and practical for every conceivable simulated environment, from emergency procedures to aviation medicine.

“There’s definitely a black and white book of ‘this is how you do it and this is how you don’t do it’ – commands for landing on water and on land and a range of different scenarios,” said Carmel. “I found that overwhelming because naturally you don’t normally yell in your job, but it’s a critical and potentially life-saving skill in an emergency.”

Nowhere is this knowledge more important than aboard a Bombardier Dash 8, which accommodates just 50 passengers on the Adelaide-Port Lincoln and Adelaide-Whyalla route. “Our planes are smaller than others in the fleet and there’s normally only two cabin crew, so we have to be across everything,” says Carmel.

The routine and hours can be unpredictable, with as many as five flights in a single day and the ever-present threat of unforeseen delays due to factors like weather.

Passenger aviophobia is another challenge, often heightened by the vibrations of the Bombardier’s turboprop twin engines. “I understand the fear of flying,” Carmel said. “If you don’t recognise the noise and the feeling of the vibrations that go with it, it can be very unnerving.”

It’s a fact not lost on Carmel’s dad, Michael, of Moculta, whose own fear of flying is well documented. “Dad’s not good at all – at the Adelaide Airport he draws out the boarding process until somebody has to go and find him; I think he hopes we’ll leave him behind!” says Carmel.

However any challenges are more than compensated by the perks of the job, including her much-loved frequent flyers: “We personally know them and their routines really well, and the regulars can always tell when we put a word in our announcements that doesn’t belong,” Carmel laughs.

Flyers will also spot Carmel in shots of Port Lincoln as part of Qantas’ latest inflight safety video, which has reached more than 90 million viewers worldwide on Qantas’ inflight and social media platforms.

While honing her skills on-set has been a steep learning curve, it has also launched her own business Charms Media, specialising in media services for the corporate sector.

Now, with the peak season looming and the imminent introduction of direct flights to Kangaroo Island from Adelaide and Melbourne, there’s a whole world of opportunity ahead for Carmel, in which perhaps only one thing is certain – the sky really is the limit.

(see 5 minutes, 50 seconds mark)

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