Jenny Svedberg grew up in the southwest Swedish countryside with her parents and two brothers. She first encountered a helicopter when one landed in a field near her home.
“I was about seven years old, and my eyes were wide as plates – just WOW! That image and feeling followed me my whole life. Something clicked, and I just knew I really, really wanted to learn how to manage those machines. They’re an aircraft that, in many ways, make the impossible possible.”
Jenny loved animals and, when she was younger, even had her own horse. One day, he got sick, and they were forced to put him down. Jenny was devastated. Her brother had just started riding motocross, so in an effort to cheer her up, her dad invited her to the track to try it out for fun and to get her mind off things. There, she discovered a new passion: more speed, higher heights, and more adrenaline than she ever got from horses! It came naturally, and she was good at it.
Jenny says that, as a kid, she was and still is, in some ways, a dreamer. But their dad got in early, letting her and her brothers know there were only two options in life as far as he was concerned – “If you want to party and do that kind of stuff, that’s fine! Do whatever you want. But if you’re all in, I’m all in; I’m going to help you with whatever I can.”
“It was a bit of a life-changing moment for us, really,” Jenny nods. “But it was an easy choice: WE GO ALL IN.”
“I felt it more meaningful to work hard and really master something. That drives me. I’m grateful to my parents for highlighting that at that time.” A dream to fly helicopters, however, felt impossibly expensive. “And I thought to become a pilot, you just had to be a bit superhuman. Back then, I didn’t feel I stood a chance.”
When she finished school, Jenny got a job at the airport cleaning airplanes and loading cargo at night. “One night, I saw a technician crawl in one of the aircraft engines and thought to myself, ‘Hmm… that seems interesting.'”
“I sneaked out and talked to the guy, telling him my dreams of becoming a pilot. He told me that if I wanted to fly, I should become a technician first to enhance my chances of getting a job.” The first thing Jenny did when she got home was apply to every tech school in Sweden she could find. A few months later, she was accepted into NFTS in Luleå, northern Sweden, and then got her first job as a helicopter technician in the Air Force.
“There, I got to work with the Super Puma, Black Hawk, and AW109. Every time I checked out a machine and the pilots came and got it, I was like, ‘OK… have fun!’ and in awe, I’d watch them take off and do the thing I’ve always dreamed of. Deep down, I knew this wasn’t really where I wanted to be.”
Five years passed, and Jenny developed homesickness when a combination of life-related matters cropped up all at once. It was time to move home, where she went all in and embarked on a thrilling and fulfilling motocross racing career. “I love the challenges and toughness of racing, both mental and physical. It was the perfect combination of full focus and giving it your all – making decisions in split seconds, choosing lines, and pushing yourself beyond your fears and perceived limitations.”
“You’re also handling setbacks like bike breakdowns and injuries, though I’ve been quite lucky. There’s a mindset that has to develop – resilience – in order to keep on going when it’s tough and find a way through.”
But that nagging need to fly never really left.
“One day, I saw a random Instagram post from adventurer Annelie Pompe – who, today, is one of my best friends and inspirations. She had posted a helicopter picture and tagged the school where she was flying. I realized that school was quite nearby, and when I looked it up, I discovered they ran a two-year government-funded program to become a commercial heli pilot.” Suddenly, the impossible dream felt possible. “I thought, ‘It’s now or never,’ worked my ass off to afford all the different tests you had to do to apply – then went for it and got in!”
Jenny was 34 then, and life took a 180 turn in many ways. “It’s been a hell of a year. Intense, though, challenging, sometimes stressful, and completely, totally amazing!”
The program she studied included six months of internship, and in the hangar beside her flight school was a company she’d been interested in for a while: STORM Heliworks. “One day, I got the opportunity to help them out on the ground with a mission, and I loved it!” Jenny ended up doing her internship simultaneously with school; in her free time, she’d be refueling, loading and briefing passengers, and preparing for sling load operations.
By the time she finished training and took her skill test for CPL this summer, Jenny’s internship was complete, and STORM offered her a job as a pilot.
“Now, a couple of months in, I’ve started to take on passengers and am doing sightseeing tours with the R44. I’m still doing the ground work as well, and I love the variability. Sometimes, it’s long days, of course, and you have to put many other things in life on hold, but the reward of personal growth alongside unique and inspiring co-workers is so worth it! Heli pilots are a special breed in many ways.”
“I would be lying if I told you that I don’t miss motocross; leaving that has been a little bit of a struggle, to be honest. Racing was a huge part of my life and my biggest passion – and it also feels like home. But I’m OK taking some distance from it. I’m really happy with what I achieved in the time I did get to spend in the sport.”
Jenny is looking forward to the point where the heli feels truly second nature, as it is when she’s riding motocross. “When you get to that point that the machine is like an extension of you – the feeling of flow and total control and total trust – that’s the best feeling in the world. Nothing beats that.”
“It has been a ride. Literal blood, sweat, and tears have been shed to get here,” Jenny grins. “But I’m so grateful, blessed, and lucky for the opportunities I got to go after my childhood dream – which I only ever thought would be a dream.”
Originally published in HeliOps magazine Issue 153
Bronni Bowen 