A few words about DORU VARLAN ....

This man likes very much to communicate. That is because communication supposedly means to better know and understand each other. Born and raised on a small country farm at about 150-km from Romania’s capital city, Bucharest, his roots lay in rural county.  He was attracted by keen sensitivity to nature, down-to-earth practicality combined with fervent idealism and poetry. He always wanted to see what was over the next hill and he also was a voracious reader and thus largely self-educated, gregarious and deeply interested in people. His first beginning to a flying job was some fifty years ago, if one counts from July the 27^th, 1950, the man’s birth date. Before venturing off into the wild blue yonder, and a dream to blossom and become fruitful, apparently it all started at about three years of age, with looking into the sky for any strangers to come down from their flying machines. Graduated some primary school at that farming village and continued it, and added secondary school studies in the nearby town of Buzau, and aviation training for particularly the flying profession followed (that is an other three-year period of time). Pilots like to name the aero-planes they use to fly, in this case the man was to captain in the cockpit of Zlin-526F, An-2, Il-14, An-24, Boeing-707 and Dash-8. Enough to accrue about 5,000 hours of flight time. Crop-spraying flying which was fascinating, like the intercontinental flying thanks to Boeing long-ranger too. For too much love to his flying job (and ‘too much’ correspondence with the western aviation world, that supposedly was seen as one possible ‘intention’ to leave the communist country), the man had to ‘accept’ his licence  suspention, and a non-flying job for five professionally difficult  years. And yet, 1989 arrived with the good and the bad. Talking about the good, being a working aviator for the furtherance of aviation, the man was among the ones to initiate and manage the Romanian Air Line Pilots’ Association (Ro-ALPA), member of IFALPA. Vice-president, president, secretary, IFALPA Director. He was an active member within the IFALPA HUPER(human performance) and AA(accident analysis) Committees, as well as a steady presence and contributor within other IFALPA workshops, conferences etc. Attended up to twenty- one pilots’ professional gatherings along the  years. “Flaps Up” Romanian magazine was put on market at the beginning of 1992, the first aviation publication following the collapse of the totalitarian regime, by this man and one close friend of him; two crazy enthusiasts and an aviation magazine. Within Ro-ALPA two other photocopied publications were prepared and distributed to members. The work with a pilots’ organisation means more or less public relations and media. Possibly that’s why a newly-born Dac Air regional company asked its human-resources department to ask the man’s collaboration as Flight Operations Dept. director. An exciting experience, starting from nothing to grow up to a really professional team (pilots and airhostesses and more) to crew and fly glass-cockpit Dash-8s and CRJs. Really nice saga, but any saga has an end. The owners could not frankly understand that an aviation company is not any company, it is a little bit more. Dac Air went off market, the man regretfully decided to leave the ship before the ship went down. Unable to long live without an aeronautical goal-to-achieve, the man initiated and set up his ‘own’ aviation foundation (the Romanian Aviation Foundation = RAF). In the meantime, the state-owned Romanian Aviation Academy (RAA) was established, to continue the country’s civil aviation training story. The man decided to accept hard work to develop the RAA’s safety & quality assurance department with regards to flight training, to manage the ground training department and the pilot ab-initio flight training Academy’s campus. Married to Manuela, he has four grown up daughters. Lives in Bucharest (the most part of the week) and at Berca (a small rural town). He has many friends around him and all over the world. Perhaps he has a few foes too. Yet looking for more Friends, he never stopped believing.