At the weekends when I was six or seven my grandad used to take me and my cousin to the old viewing park at Manchester airport. We’d sit for hours watching the planes take off. The airport back then was filled with different airlines with their bright liveries like Britannia, Air 2000, Airtours, Monarch, Air Canada – I was amazed how these great big machines could leave the ground and fly across the world.

My grandad would give us 20p to buy a paper plane model which we’d put together and launch by the side of the runway. I thought the radio – my grandad’s prized possession – that played the conversations between air traffic control and the pilots was straight out of a James Bond film.

Little did I know then what an impact all those trips to the airport would have on my life. I’d walk to and from high school with my head permanently looking at the sky, a fact my best friend still teases me about today. I was a lot bigger back then, I was the fat kid in school in a time when Thatcher’s Section 28 prevented teachers supporting queer kids, I’d eat my feelings in late night binges as I came to terms with being queer. It wasn’t a good thing in the 90s to be gay.

One lesson we had to say what we wanted to be when we grew up and one lad said, ‘you’d never fit in the flight deck,’ when I revealed my aspirations to be crew. It was the absolute catalyst I needed. I lost six stone – which probably tells you just how big I was – in my determination to have a career above the clouds.

A few years later when I was eighteen, I saw an advert in The Manchester Evening News for cabin crew for British Airways. Remember when Thursday nights were job nights? I applied; I got it. And who drove me in my new uniform on my first day? My grandad. I didn’t stay at BA for long, I was offered a permanent contract but left after six months as I felt like I’d been short changed; I wanted to travel the world but was put on the city hopper fleet flying no further than the four corners of the UK.

For the next 17 years I flew as cabin crew for several airlines working on some weird and wonderful contracts. I got to spend 9 months based down in the south Atlantic at Ascension Island and The Falklands. On my grandad’s 80th birthday I got a flight back from the Falklands – nearly 20 hours travelling time – and drove back to Manchester from Brize Norton in my uniform and went straight to his party. By then he was at the mid stages of dementia but recognised me immediately, asking me where I’d flown in from and how my boyfriend was. He was a legend and a gentleman.

My new book Winging It will be released on the 28th May 2026. It’s a romcom but is really my love letter to aviation. It takes you behind the galley curtain and into the lives of the crew onboard. Essentially, it’s a love story set in Manchester and is authentically told. Its themes are the power of chosen family, the pitfalls of modern-day dating, and of course, the wonderful world of aviation. It will break your heart before putting it back together. Most importantly, it will give you hope in these dark times. I’m immensely proud of it.

Winging It is available to preorder right now on eBook – link in the comments. If you prefer a paperback, don’t worry, you can sign up for a reminder on publication day at www.mikelawsonwrites.co.uk When you’re reading it, if you're kind enough to do so, see if you can spot the character in it who might just be taking his grandkids to fly planes at the viewing park

Mike Lawson