Andreea Bănesaru is the only girl in the aerial acrobatics formation “The Hawks of Romania”. He learned to fly before he knew how to drive a car, and now he draws in the sky and does aerial acrobatics while also being a flight instructor for other people.
Andreea Bănesaru is only 26 years old. She is a frail, sensitive young woman, but when she is alone on the plane she is in control of herself. He has accumulated over 1,700 flight hours. He performs in the sky at every air show, but for several years he has also been training those who want to pursue a career in the field or who are just doing it out of passion.
When she was little, she dreamed of becoming an airline pilot. Her parents, employees of the TAROM company, often took her to work. That’s how he had the chance to see an airplane up close at the age of 5-6, to enter a hangar. He would sit for hours and admire the steel monster, which became a toy in the experienced hands of the pilots. Then he would watch the well-dressed airline pilots heading off on shorter or longer journeys. That’s how the child decided that when she grows up, she will be an airline pilot. For his parents, who worked the soil, it was a dream.
Years passed, but the dream remained. A first step was taken when Andreea was 16 years old and when she started free courses at the Romanian Aeroclub. “This was in 2016, ten years ago. At first I took it as a game, as a hobby, I wanted to have experience to go further in my career, to go my way. I did not expect to perform as I do now. And over time, spending many hours at the airfield, sitting here day after day, sometimes even missing school to come and fly, I would see how the pilots fly in formation, how they train, sometimes they had some great sunset flights and I watched them in fascination every time. I had a show at the airfield every day.”Andreea relives those memories for “Weekend Adevărul”.
Dream high
So one day, while he was at the Clinceni airfield, seeing how the pilots of the “Romanian Falcons” were training, he decided that his dream was aerial acrobatics. “At first, I didn’t even dare to dream that I would reach the performance and that I would be in their team, because it seemed very difficult to me, it seemed to me that only the talented ones would get into this formation and that they would do acrobatics. I was still on my path as an airline pilot. But spending even more time with them, accumulating even more experience, becoming friends with the people in the team, I made the decision to work here”says Andreea.
She was a first-year college student at the Academy of Economic Studies, but her passion was all about the sky, not numbers. So, in 2019 he started working with the idea of becoming an instructor pilot in the future, without any thought of acrobatics. In the same year, in 2019, he was proposed to start acrobatics as well. The young woman was very happy, being a unique opportunity in Romania to do acrobatics. She was the only girl then. Now, there are more girls in training, but their journey is still long, because they also took a long time to reach this performance.
The first air show
Its first event was in 2022 at Clinceni, then later at BIAS. Thousands of hours of training are behind an air show. “I needed three years in which I did acrobatics and trained to participate in my first air show. Also in 2022, at my first participation in BIAS, I received the news that I entered the Hawks of Romania. At the end of the event there was a surprise organized by the general director George Rotaru. I was very happy. I knew that from that moment I would spend all the shows with the band and that I would participate in many rallies from now on next to them and this makes me very happy”says Andreea. It was a beautiful experience that helped her reach even further. From 2024 he started participating in the world and European championships. He has already been participating in national acrobatics championships since 2020, where he ranks 2nd almost every time.
Closer to the sky
How is it closer to the sky? It is the curiosity of anyone who has not been there. “For me, because I really wanted this, the first flight felt like a dream come true. At first there were emotions, because I didn’t know how to control them or I didn’t know what was waiting for me. But I think the biggest thrill was on my first flight when I was alone on the plane. The instructor was no longer next to me, and then I had the greatest emotions, I realized that everything I will do in the next few minutes will depend on me, that is, my life will be in my hands. It was the first time I had sentimental this one. It was a joy. I was 17 years old and didn’t even have a driver’s license yet, and I was flying an ultralight aircraft. I had a pilot’s license before I had a driver’s license“, says the girl.
She believes that it is more difficult to fly a plane, but she believes that it is more risky to drive, because on the road you have many drivers around you, and sometimes certain actions do not depend only on you. “In the plane, if you make a mistake, you do it at your own risk, but on the road it happens that someone else makes a mistake and endangers the lives of others”.
The most important show in Romania that she participated in is the Bucharest International Airshow, because it is the largest organized in Romania, but she is also very proud of the air shows outside the country that she participated in, such as those in Poland, where she was with the team last year, in Hungary and Turkey. “I was grateful to be present there, to see how an air show is organized outside our country, how much the world appreciates aviation in other countries. I really liked the experience and I want to relive it this year with my colleagues and to have invitations to other events of this kind. Very few people know that Romania has been on the podium at the world and European championships for many years”.
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Just last year, at the World Acrobatic Championship, which is one of the most important, Romania was on the 1st place, Andreea took the 2nd place individually, and in the advanced class, Romania was on the 2nd place with the team and individually the best place was the 3rd place. This result from last year is as good as the one from two years ago, as it was three years ago. “Of course, the more we train and the more time passes we get better, but Romania is very well seen in aviation as a performance”she reveals. She did not compete with many girls, one girl from Sweden, one from America and the other from France were also registered in the championship.
The “Romanian Lions” team includes George Rotaru (team manager), Laszlo Ferencz (right wing), Ioan Ursu (left wing), Teodor Munteanu (tail/solo), Andreea Bănesaru (right wing/solo), Valentin Caval (left wing/solo), Attila Goger (tail), Andrei Șerbu (left wing/solo), Vlad Popescu (right wing/solo), Petre Glonțaru (tail) and Andrei Eparu (leader). The fleet currently consists of five Extra 300L and five Extra 330SC aircraft, making it one of the largest Extra 300/330 fleets in the world. All aircraft have smoke systems installed on board that are capable of writing on the sky.
Aviation cantonment
The trainings are weekly, sometimes, when the team prepares for air shows, they go to training, because they, besides the performance part, have many activities at the Aeroclub of Romania. “Besides all the administrative part, we make a flight or two every weekend when the weather permits, but we also have specific camps for this type of activity, especially when a competition is approaching. For example, we go to Deva for a week and there we know that for a week we just focus on training, talking to each other, helping each other, forming the best possible programs, flying, staying at the station, because when we make a flight we don’t make it free. Someone he stays at the station and tells us if we did the figures correctly. After the flight, we also discuss what went wrong, what we are going to do next”.
Performance aerobatics differ from show acrobatics, mainly because the pilots spin the plane with smoke as much as possible in all directions, they don’t pay much attention to precision, but do everything they can to the enjoyment of the audience on the ground. Performance acrobatics, on the other hand, is something else entirely. In this case, the pilot focuses on correctness of figures, angles, speeds, height. Flight is much more complex. The young girl says she has not had any incidents. “I think the most important thing is to check your plane very well before the flight and focus on what’s next,” is her explanation for a successful, but above all, safe flight.
“My first student was 48 years old”
Andreea Bănesaru is also a flight instructor since 2019. Currently, she has more than 20 students whom she has taught to fly. “When I first became an instructor I was 19 years old and my students were much older than me. We had students from 16 years old to over 50 years old. My first student was 48 years old and he was doing it out of passion. He was very understanding and I will never forget him. And now we keep in touch and he’s proud that I was his instructor, even though I was just starting out and maybe I didn’t know how to express my knowledge as well as a 40-year-old instructor or a 30-year-old instructor would. He’s proud of me and I’m proud of him now“, remembers Andreea.
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Those between the ages of 16 and 23 can take these courses. Some courses are free, being subsidized by the state. Those who are over 23 years old can enroll in courses for a fee. The price varies depending on the aircraft, being between 7,000 and 12,000 euros for 24 hours of flight, to which the theory part is added. Those who complete these courses obtain an international flight license, then each follows his dream: either he goes to military aviation, or to general aviation, as an airline pilot. Those who want to fly a helicopter must take courses at the Higher Aviation School.
“Aviator’s Alphabet”
During the winter, when she cannot fly, given the unfavorable weather conditions, Andreea writes books about flying, bringing the sky closer to the children, as the lessons are addressed to them.
“The books came from the inspiration I had from air shows. When I get off the plane, a lot of kids want to take pictures with me, give them autographs, and then thousands of questions come, but at an air show, time does not allow me to stay long enough to satisfy all their curiosities. And so I thought of writing a book, and I put the information I had into two volumes. Each book contains ten flying lessons: the aviator’s alphabet, how to control the plane, what is in a pilot’s bag, types of clouds, signs at the airport, there are many interactive and educational lessons that children read and after each lesson they have an exercise to deepen their knowledge. The language is very simple, in their understanding“, says Andreea.
