[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign welcome to this edition of the Sky Careers Podcast. It's my absolute privilege to welcome today Steph Di Fava, who is the airport, is an airport coordination officer at Adelaide Airport and she'll share all about her role there as we get talking. Steph was also one of our original Sky Careers ambassadors. So we've known each other for a while and I know you're going to enjoy the conversation.
So welcome Steph.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Hey, Mark. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: You're very welcome. How have you been? Everything okay?
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Yes, yeah, very well. Very cold over here in Adelaide, but can't complain. How are you?
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm fabulous. So listen, just give us a bit of a backstory.
Tell us a little about what you do and where you work.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So I work for Adelaide Airport and I work in what we call the Airport Coordination Centre as a coordination officer and I've been doing that for a little bit over a year now.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Fantastic. You know, we always like to go into your backstory. So just, just, just for our listeners, where did you go to school and what were your favorite subjects?
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So I went to a small all girls school here in South Australia.
While I was there, I really enjoyed Italian, English and Italian accounting. So on the flip side, wasn't the biggest fan of math and the sciences.
And I had a general idea since high school that I wanted to pursue a career in aviation.
I just wasn't really sure how to go about it because all the knowledge available to me was that you've got one of two career paths. You've got pilot or engineer. I wanted to do neither.
So yeah, I was a little bit lost for how to, how to go about pursuing a career. And if there were any tertiary options available to me, it wasn't until I stumbled across Bachelor of Aviation Management with Uni sa. I found it online and I thought, right, here we go, fantastic. I can, I've got something to pursue post high school and yeah, that's what I did.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: Fantastic. And you know, that's like the perfect, the perfect lead into obviously a lot of the work we do at Sky Careers, which is increasing the awareness of, of the, as you say, the broad range of aviation careers, not just defense or pilot or cabin crew, there's so many more. So once you've got that qualification, which you very carefully ferreted out yourself, hopefully we're making it easier that you don't need to do that as much.
What was your first job in? Aviation.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: Yep. So while I was studying, I managed to land myself a casual position with Virgin Australia as a guest service agent. So that worked in quite well with their able to study on the side.
And I did that for about 10 months. I really, really enjoyed my first job in aviation. It was obviously at Adelaide Airport and the job was all about helping passengers check in to board their aircraft or to purchase new tickets to help them out in the event of delays, which obviously involves acknowledge of say dangerous goods if you're going internationally, passport requirements, visa requirements and such, and just general communication knowledge and skills with the general public.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: So for listeners, you'd be the person. If we're checking into a Virgin Australia flight at one of the airports around Australia and we were doing it through a person and not an automated check in, you'd be the person who helped us, is that right?
[00:03:40] Speaker B: That's it, yes. Yeah. We did also have the automated systems but we were always there to help out with people if they required it.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: Fantastic. And how did you go from there to your current role? Because one of the things that I know from both talking to you and obviously talking more broadly is a lot of people where they end up in their role in aviation. They've taken a few stepping stones on the way through and one of the advantages of aviation is there are lots of different options and you can sort of almost like plan your own adventure. You join one place like this. But I didn't like that. But I like that. But in sort of tick tick tact your way to. To where, where you want to end up. So what was your pathway?
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Yeah, so I feel fortunate enough to be able to say that I've tried maybe five different pathways prior to landing where I am today and it didn't, it wasn't necessarily by choice. Covid had part to play and other similar situations. But yeah, so since my Virgin days I tried a variety of different positions. I went on to do guest service, agents agenting and ground handling for a fixed wing FIFO airline.
I also was a operations controller as well as support for health and safety and engineering for a helicopter charter company which also provided those same similar FIFO services.
I also did technical records and some more health and safety auditing for a maintenance company.
And all those jobs helped me, in my opinion, build on my skills and helped me have a backing for, I suppose, portfolio proof or experience which helped me to land the job I have today with Adelaide Airport, which I had my eyes on for some time. So I feel very grateful and I'm very much have enjoyed the pathway to get to where I am today.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: Yeah. And I guess having worked and seen so many different facets of aviation, which is, I mean, I always, I sort of, tongue in cheek, say my, you know, and as you know, I'm not an aviation expert expert, but it seems to me that, you know, aviation is many things, but one of the things it is is a logistics business with wings, often goods and services. But also of course, where we know it best is moving people around.
And it's very much an ecosystem, isn't it? Lots of different moving parts and, you know, and every and lots of teamwork and everyone relies on everyone else. And so understanding different aspects of that ecosystem must be very useful for getting you into your current job. So my question, what training did you need to do? Was there any formal training you needed to do for your current job?
[00:06:32] Speaker B: I wouldn't, I'd say technically, no. Obviously there's only the job training once you've been selected for the position.
However, to have been selected for the position in the first place, there wasn't necessarily any strong prerequisite. Obviously it's quite desirable and preferable if you have a history in operations management and aviation.
But I wouldn't say it was required.
[00:07:00] Speaker A: Yeah, but from what you've just said, it sounds like this is, this is, this is not an easy job to get. Is that right? There's, there's quite a few people want to do what you do.
[00:07:08] Speaker B: It's. Yes, it's definitely been a high demand role.
It has everyone quite curious and interested. So it's very high demand.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Cool. Okay, well, talk us through a typical day. Talk us through a typical day in your, in your role.
[00:07:25] Speaker B: Sure, yeah. So it's, I would describe it in the broad sense that the purpose of my role is to oversee the day of operations at the airport, using our computer programs and systems to essentially ensure that our facilities and infrastructure function as they should.
And if you were to imagine where I work, it would be in a, it's a desk based role. It's quite similar to what you'd imagine air traffic control tower would have as a view.
And we have so many monitoring checklist items that we constantly oversee throughout the day. Our primary responsibility, I would say would be our bay planner management. So obviously, as you can imagine, planes come and go, they've got to park somewhere.
We deal with managing where they can occupy their time while they're on our premise or on our land.
That's obviously something that can get quite tricky with things such as delays or unserviceabilities. It's always a moving piece that we're just constantly Keeping our eye on throughout the shift.
Further to that, we're monitoring our systems, such as our bms, our boot management systems, making sure everything is running as it should, as I mentioned, security systems, making sure everything is nice and secure.
And as well as this monitoring work, we've also got a lot of our job is reactive.
We say something infrastructure wise in the terminal or even airside were to require urgent maintenance, that would be us who coordinates that.
Normally we're hearing about this either through our systems or we have our stakeholders who are always constantly communicating with us and feeding on, getting this feedback through to us. Incident response management for be it again things airside, things with aircraft, hopefully few and far between occurrences and medical instances are something we do see fairly often. As you can imagine. We have a lot of people at our airport and transiting through our airport. I hope that gives you a bit of a well rounded understanding of what I do. It's a very complicated job, so one day is not the same as the other.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: A couple of questions. So late airport, how many sort of passenger movements would you see through there in a year?
[00:09:44] Speaker B: It's in the millions now, I'd say from what I've been told recently, I think it was around 10 million a year.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: Don't hold me to that. I'm pretty sure that's a figure.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And for those of you who haven't been fortunate, I've been to Adelaide Airport a few times and it's quite a shiny new airport now, isn't it? You've got some nice, nice new terminal buildings there. It's really cool.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. If you were to walk through, you'll see a lot of our terminal expansion or the results of our terminal expansion projects looking very, very flashy.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean, and as you can imagine with millions of passenger things like, you know, things like medical emergencies, they must happen very frequently, I would think.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. It's perhaps not as frequently as what you'd imagine would happen at a larger airport at a bigger city, say Melbourne or Sydney, but it does happen from time to time? You'd hope not, obviously.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: So let me ask you this.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: What part two part question. What part of your job do you enjoy the most and what would you say are the key sort of qualities you need to do your job well?
[00:10:55] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So the. My most favourite part of my role would be communicating with our stakeholders and their teams or their employees.
Like I mentioned earlier, that includes people like engineers, ground handlers, caterers, pilots and cabin crew retailers, tenants in the terminal. So when you pick up the phone, you're not sure. It could be one of so many different types of people who would be contacting you, asking for help. And that is part of the novelty and the fun of the job. You've got to put your thinking cap on quite quickly and think very strategically.
And I suppose that ties in with the skill that you'd require, the types of skills you'd require to be in the job. So communication is definitely paramount and tailoring how you communicate to different people and groups of people, you need to be able to be proactive while performing with accuracy. So not letting the stress or the fast paced type of. The fast paced nature of the role. Rather you can't let that get to you. You have to make sure you're able to think quite critically and rapidly while not, how you say, compromising on the accuracy or quality of the work you're doing. Yeah.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: Calm under pressure.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: Yes, calm under pressure. 100%.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
Love it. And as you all said, patient as well.
I love that. And I think, I think generally in the world now we're far less patient and I think especially when we're traveling, we all get, it's very often we get this myopic focus on our little journey and our thing and our luggage and I think we can get. And obviously a lot of people also find traveling and flying specifically quite stressful, don't they? So I can imagine adding to all that if you get delays or other things like that, that your communication skills and your patience can be tested quite regularly.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, I think I forget sometimes not everyone enjoys flying or getting on a plane. So it can be a very, very frustrating and stressful situation to be in.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Yeah, cool. What's the least favourite part of your job, Steph?
[00:13:12] Speaker B: So I wouldn't say I have a least favourite, but I've definitely got parts of it that I would like to work towards getting better at or becoming more familiar with.
As I said, I am, yeah, still quite fresh in the role. So with time things will come. But as we've mentioned, aviation is a very industry where the work environment is quite dynamic and fluid and I'm someone who is quite comfortable thinking black and white. Whereas in my position and in this environment you have to think a little bit gray sometimes. Not every scenario you encounter is going to be like for like with what you've had in the past. So. And circumstances change, regulations change, each operator operates differently. So I'd say the one thing I find to be a challenge, but I enjoying working toward is learning to Think a bit more gray and embracing change and a bit of uncertainty here and there.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: I love that in my leadership work I often talk about the. How having the ability to manage or lead through ambiguity, just not completely black and white. Yeah, I think that's a real quality.
Steph. One of the, I guess issues that a lot of people have talked about in the past anyway is the challenge for women working in aviation. It's often seen or portrayed as a male dominated industry or has been in the past. What's been your experience in that regard?
[00:14:52] Speaker B: Yeah, while I feel fortunate enough to have not had my gender be a massive roadblock in my career, certainly in previous roles, I have been made to feel that being a young woman has made people question my authority or my decision making.
I think that also comes to be part of the path of the course when you're a new staff member joining a company for the first time. But yeah, I can't say that.
Unfortunately I have dealt with that from time to time.
When you're around a little bit longer and you have established your work reputation for yourself, I suppose if you want to call it that. Yeah, you encounter it a bit less frequently. But yeah, I can. Unfortunately from time to time you might forget that as a new player.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: Yeah, no, and that's, I think that reflects obviously I can only reflect what other people have told me in the many interviews I've done on the podcast and with the ambassador interviews. And, and I think you, as you say, you, you mentioned it's like a new age and I think generally that the, that sort of, maybe the misogynistic attitude is much less, much less pronounced than maybe it was. But. Yeah, yeah, 10, 20, 30 years ago, but it still exists a little bit. And yes, and also we always get, we all get. I think, I think, I think, you know, it's the, it's the curse of, it's curse of being young. Sometimes people think young people don't know anything but you guys are incredibly well trained and very well equipped to, you know.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Situations I think living in Australia where in a quiet accepting and forward thinking country I'd imagine elsewhere probably be quite different.
Last I checked, I think the figures for pilots and engineers in America I think was 2% are female and those figures are quite similar to Australia's numbers. So very.
I would think that even though these days we're quite, we've broken down some barriers, you can tell there's some residual, there's the aftermath of that culture that we're still affected by with those really Low figures. So.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, obviously part of, I guess part of why Sky Careers came into being was as part of our funding, with federal government initiative to increase the participation of women in the broader aviation community. And you're, you're a real, you're, you're, you're a. You know, it's great to hear that the experience that you. You've had is, Is more good than bad, let's put it that way.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. 100% has been. Yeah.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Which is great.
What do you do when you're not. When you. When. When you're not an airport coordination officer at Adelaide Airport. Steph.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: Yeah, so I would be. I'd say that I'm quite fond of exercise. I love going to the gym or being in the outdoors in general.
I love reading.
I enjoy. I'm a bit of a homebody. I enjoy being at home with my family, my two cats.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: We need names. The listeners need names.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: So we've got Phoenix and Winter.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Oh, lovely, lovely.
We're cat fans at Sky Careers. We've got three in my house.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: Three?
Yeah. Two is a handful, so I can't imagine.
No, that's. That's gorgeous. Yes. And I love cooking.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: And your favourite, what's your signature dish?
[00:18:36] Speaker B: So mine would be the same as my Lono's, because that's who I learned from. And pasta, it's called pasta with chichi. So chickpeas and pasta.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: Sounds good. Well, you'll have to cook it for us at some point when we next. Where we next see your step and look. And just my final question, and thank you again for your time today.
What advice would you give to other young women and young men looking for a career in aviation?
[00:19:07] Speaker B: Yeah. So for the women or the young ladies, first and foremost, I'd say I'd remind them that aviation is no longer a boys club where we're more than welcome and more than capable. And I'd encourage anyone who's got even an inkling of an interest to consider joining the industry, doing work experience or whatever they can.
And I'd also mention or say that you shouldn't assume that to be part of the industry, you've either got two technical options, be it pilot or engineer. There's so many other opportunities for boys and girls if they want to be part of our industry. There's management positions with airlines or airports, ground handling, guest services, refueling, even positions with government bodies or agencies who are affiliated with aviation.
There's so much choice, so don't pigeonhole yourself and don't yeah.
Don't fear, you know, pursuing some, pursuing another type of job in the industry. It's a very, very exciting industry to be part of.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: That's fantastic. Thank you. And it also strikes me as being quite merit based from having spoken to a lot of sort of people about how they got into the industry. A lot of them said, I started here like you. You started in a, you know, a relatively, you know, sort of, sort of, sort of a lower level position. But once you're there, you've been able to identify other opportunities, you've been able to train on the job, you've been able to, you know, you've been able to develop your skills and confidence and capabilities. And I think, as you said, you've moved to four or five roles.
[00:20:44] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: And now you've got the role you like. And I say we hear that story again and again that people who turn up with a good attitude, a good work ethic work on those core abilities. Like you talk about communication, teamwork seems to me to be a very important one as well. And the ability to lend a hand and turn and probably turn your hand to anything. Right. Because stuff happens all the time, right?
[00:21:05] Speaker B: 100%, yes.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And that sets you up for success. Well, that's been fantastic. Really enjoyed speaking with you.
We've had a couple of technical problems in our podcast and I'm going to risk everything by saying I think we finally nailed it. We finally brought this one into land unintended.
Thanks so much for your time, Stephen.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: Thank you. Have a good day.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: Yeah, see you soon.
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