“I plan to fly as long as I am fit to do so, and there is still 10 years until my retirement age,” Karapetyan told ARMENPRESS in the cockpit of his Boeing 737 of the Aircompany Armenia shortly after landing in the Yerevan airport.
Captain Karapetyan has an astounding 23000 flying hours, and during his career he has faced various kinds of situations. While operating a flight earlier in his career, his plane suffered engine failure, but eventually he was able to land the aircraft safely. “I don’t want to speak much about it, I just wish for all pilots to always have safe flights and landings”, he said.
“I was born in a family of a pilot, my father was a flight engineer, and my mother was an air traffic controller. My older brother is also a pilot”, says the captain, proudly crediting his brother Albert with teaching him how to fly an airplane. “To this day Abo is my teacher”, he said, noting that they have worked together in the UAE, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kazakhstan and now in their homeland, Armenia.
Karapetyan began his aviation career as a helicopter pilot in 1986. Just two years after he began piloting helicopters, the catastrophic earthquake of Spitak struck Armenia, killing tens of thousands and devastating cities. And still not fully recovered from the tragedy, the Nagorno Karabakh War began.
“At that time we participated in both military operations and rescue missions, airlifting the wounded to hospitals, and we also transported ammunition. Those were difficult days, but I had no fear, I was around 20 years old back then”.
After the war ended, Karapetyan decided to become an airline pilot.
“This transition was easy for me because flying a helicopter is harder than flying a plane. My first flight was on a Yakovlev YAK 40 when I was working in Yerevan. Around two years later I began flying an Antonov An-24 when I was working in Africa. I lived there for 4 years. From 1996 I began piloting an Antonov An-12 cargo plane, flying from the UAE to Afghanistan and Iraq,” the captain said.
He then worked as a pilot for Armavia, and underwent training and became a qualified captain of a Bombardier CRJ 200. But Armavia went bankrupt shortly afterwards and...
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