Spread Your Wings - Mum & Son's Flying Fancy

The sky’s the limit for these captain fantastics

As a toddler, Ryan Bergman would be strapped into his car seat, perched in the cockpit alongside his pilot dad and taken for countless scenic flights soaring high over the Hauraki Gulf.

Two decades later, the dashing 26-year-old is still in the cockpit, but these days he’s gone from passenger to captain and, in keeping with family tradition, flying for the same airline as his pilot mum!

“Ryan came into this world with wings on,” laughs Air New Zealand’s first female jet captain Ruth Schoushkoff, 64. “He was always around airplanes and loved them.”

Adds Ryan, “It’s amazing working in the same company, especially when I got my command. We took photos because we were in the same uniform.”

With the mum-and-son team making airline history, the pair share a passion for flying that spans generations. However, Ruth reveals her start was accidental.

“I went parachuting a couple of times when I was about 23 and was spectacularly unsuccessful at it,” she recalls. “I jumped out and my toggle, which steers where you are going, wasn’t working and I landed on the rump of a cow! I cracked my ankle.

“I let that heal and stupidly went up again and broke something else. I was not good at it, but I did enjoy going up in the airplane and thought, ‘Why don’t I learn how to fly?’”