OpeOluwa Iyortim

Experience & Activities

My name is OpeOluwa Iyortim; I go by ‘Ops’ for short. I fell in love with aviation on my very first flight as a toddler during which I got taken into the cockpit. Since then, I lived with the single-minded goal of becoming an Airline pilot; as all my friends and family will tell you while rolling their eyes. 

This end goal of a career in aviation has influenced all my major life decisions, including my choice of a Bachelor’s degree in Geography after high school. I spent a year after university teaching high school geography as part of a mandatory service corps programme, a detour that expanded possibilities for me and helped me discover my love for sharing knowledge through teaching and mentorships. By the end of this year, my love for aviation was stronger than ever, although I mourned leaving my teaching position. I concluded final preparations and left the country for flight training the following year. 

I enrolled in the integrated commercial pilot course (ICPC) at the Moncton Flight College in 2015. 18 months, numerous overnight study sessions and 200 hours later, I was faced with the dilemma of how to move my career forward. My love for teaching eventually won out and I opted to enroll in the instructor program. I served as a full-time instructor for two years during which time I took the option of an upgrade to become a class-II flight instructor. I served in multiple roles including dispatching, internal audits and ground school instructing before moving on to a regional carrier in 2019. I am currently a first officer on one of the two biggest airlines in Canada and when my schedule permits, I take on freelance instructing gigs. It’s a tight juggling act, but I find joy and fulfillment in bringing people into the family that is aviation.  

Wholly appreciative of the peculiarities that have provided me the runway to perform the impressive feat of building an airline career in just 4 years, I decided to leverage on my experiences; past and ongoing, to create The Vectored Approach. My new dream is to lower the barriers to aviation and standardize safety and professionalism.