A Passion for Flight - 86 Years... 43,000 Hours... And Still a Pilot!

Nothing predestined Jean-Louis Daroux to pursue a career as a pilot! The great-grandson of the estate manager of Armand Fallières, he should have been a farmer. Frustrated by having little information about the life of this ancestor, other than that he supplied the Élysée Palace with capons for presidential feasts, he was haunted by the idea of ​​writing for his own grandson.

The confinement due to COVID-19 gave him the opportunity and the time. Twenty-seven years as a military pilot, enhanced by several operational stays, precede thirty-eight years as a civilian pilot, both on helicopters and on airplanes of all sizes. It is reasonable to think that the period covered by these sixty years represents the link between the adventures of our Great Elders and the "assisted" of which he is a part. His 43,000 flight hours allowed him to experience both sides of an aviation that will have been his life of passion and
of adventures.

"If you differ from me, my brother, far from harming me you enrich me."
Antoine de Saint Exupéry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Lt/Colonel Jean-Louis Daroux was born in 1936 in Tarbes (Hautes Pyrénées). He trained as a technician and industrial designer. However, maintaining order in Algeria curtailed his ambitions, as the Air Force lacked helicopter pilots. He then moved on to piloting airplanes, with a six-year break during which he worked as a corporate executive, without stopping to pilot Transall as a "subscriber" in the Military Air Transport. There was no respite for this enthusiast. Today, at 86, he still has the chance to be an instructor on R-22 helicopters and light aircraft.