(upbeat acoustic music)
- I was born in Beijing in 1980.
As seven year old, I came to Hong Kong with my parents.
Hong Kong is such a special place.
It shapes up my passion here, during my childhood years.
In the summer, in July 1993,
my mother took me on my first big trip to the US.
And I flew on, it was United Airlines,
I still remember the flight number,
it was UA800 from Hong Kong to Tokyo.
It was my first time, 12 year old, to see America.
It was amazing.
Something like 15 days, Hawaii, West Coast, Las Vegas,
East Coast, Canada, you see it all.
Intensive flying it was, you know, for a 12 year old.
I was going to the airport every second day,
you know, check in and fly.
We flew some of those planes at
that time was seven 27, seven 57, DC10,
and of course seven 47, and I'll tell you,
those days are wonderful in the US.
There was no TSA.
There's no security check,
(audience laughs)
and you can go through to the concourse,
and watching planes, and come as you like in and out.
And even better, there are food.
You don't have to pay for.
Free food on board, free sandwiches,
hot meals in domestic flight.
We need United to listen to what we're saying here.
The wonderful thing at that time
I joined is called a Mileage Plus.
It's one of the best frequent flyer scheme,
as you probably know.
So at a time I did this trip,
I earned a 20 thousand miles when I was 12.
It was good enough for a round trip ticket from
Hong Kong to Tokyo.
By the time I was 15,
I was travelling back and forth US and Hong Kong,
and I even flew in business class,
thanks for the Mileage Plus scheme and upgrades.
Why I'm so into aviation when I was such young,
obviously I flew so much at that time it hit me,
and I think the best thing I like about flying
is being disconnected.
And you would argue, like, you know,
without Wi-Fi these days and everything,
it's so slow and boring, but I actually like that.
It's a luxury thing to be disconnected from the ground,
and free up your mind.
I'm a dreamer.
I'm a daydreamer.
I love to dream so many different things into the plane.
First love.
My first love, wasn't a girl, it was a plane.
(audience laughs)
Strange, strange, very strange.
We live in a wonderful place at Kai Tak.
We had a wonderful airport like no other airport had.
What I consider was very romantic is at nighttime,
standing at the fence outside Kai Tak at Kowloon City,
watching a seven four seven, fully loaded seven four seven,
taxiing to the fresh home.
You know, you see the cabin lights all on.
You can even probably see a fly attendant,
walking down doing the final check.
And it was very romantic to me watching that plane,
you know, taking off, a full hundred tonne metal bird,
taking off Hong Kong, and carrying probably,
four hundred people, four hundred people,
with four hundred stories.
Four hundred reasons to travel.
It's the moment skyward.
That was the exciting moment for me,
and this is what I love about aviation.
In 1997, my mother and I immigrated to Sydney, Australia.
At the time, we flew this plane here.
This was called a spaceship.
I remember this plane very well,
and that airline went bust in 2001.
I studied at university in Australia,
and I have a lot of freedom at the time,
when I was in Australia.
I've got my first drivers licence,
and I've got my first car.
Do you know where I drove to?
Give me a guess.
(audience member answers)
Of course, airports.
(audience laughs)
Nowhere else I wanted to be with than the airport.
So I studied Finance and Economics in the university.
I was pretty good at it, but along the side
I was always into aviation,
and because I spend callous time just watching the planes,
and that thing really gets you into it,
and at times you could explain to other people,
and other people figure some sort of weirdo,
and so along the time I go to the airport,
I pick up my first SLR camera in 1999.
It was called the Rebel 2000, just before the Y2K.
And I start photographing, collecting memories,
and looking through the planes coming past your lens
I started to, as a contributor photographer,
when I was 18 years old to a website,
some of you know this website, it's called airliners.net
It's actually a really good site at that time
because it was none, none of other sites like that.
You can submit all your aeroplane photos on there,
and then you get lots of views from people,
you get a pride out of it, you, you know,
it's a good promotion thing.
I also started my website in about the year 2000.
When I graduated, I got my first job in Australia,
it was in the government of Australia,
it's in the Australian Bureau of Statistics,
as a trainee statistician.
It sounds really boring, isn't it, like you know,
I didn't last at that job very long, maybe 10 months.
Then I had my second job, it was at Bloomberg,
it was my first job in the financial circle,
and I was a data analyst, I was supporting the traders,
and I was also supporting the news desk,
so I learned the trade of financial trading and journalism.
Getting paid a salary, then I used that money
I earned to do more flying along the way,
and there were few significant flights I want
to share with you during those years.
This is one of those,
can you guess which aeroplane this is on?
(audience answers)
well you're very smart, you know everything.
(audience laughs)
So this was taken from the very last window of the concord.
It looks out, it was looking like a spaceship,
because it was kind of like the shape of it,
and at times I dream about seeing the curvature of the earth
because the thing was flying so high at 58 thousand feet.
This, you know, is so high,
there's no other plane can fly this high,
you know you see the dark curvature of the earth,
it's deep blue.
That was me in 2003.
I was a lot heavier, I was chubby,
but I did a three hour eighteen minutes across the Atlantic.
I paid 27 hundred US dollars for that ticket.
It wasn't too bad if you think about it.
You are buying time by travelling on that concord.
You take off in London at five P.M.,
you arrive New York four P.M.,
you're gaining time and paying 27 hundred, time's money.
So this was taken in 2007 on the world's first,
commercially know flight on the A380 with
Singapore Airlines of course, so I managed
to snap one of these suite class,
at the time was revolutionary, there's nothing like it,
a private suite on a plane.
I'm not only into luxury, luxury's beautiful,
it's comfortable, everybody dream about.
I was real, real passionate in all sorts of aviation,
of all aspect.
So I went to Iran, this was taken from a window of a
Boeing 707, with a tubular 154 holding down there,
and with a bunch of classic planes in Iran,
due to the sanction there.
Sharing my trip stories on airliners.net
that later on I enabled more people to get to experience
that same kind of aviation thrill I have.
I think this was more thrill than flying in first class
on the A380 because you do a lot of work,
there's a lot of uncertainty,
you don't know about a country like that,
and you going there, you're on a mission so,
I always enjoyed the ending salary was really sweet.
I published a book in 2008 and it's called the Air,
I was always into taking pictures,
and I was always thinking it'll be more wonderful if you can
take a picture from an angle different to the others.
Exclusive access angle, so I tried a helicopter,
when I was in Los Angeles in this time,
I was one of the first one to start doing this,
in the early 2000s, I first flew a Cessna and I realised,
you can hover with helicopter,
so we chartered those helicopters,
and waiting on these seven 47 one after another to land,
and so this was my first book in 2008.
It was all pictures.
And this is the second book I published,
again this is the Los Angeles background in 2012,
it's called the Air two.
And there's one more, I called it Air number three,
which in 2014 I was a coauthor on this book.
At the end of 2010, there was a phone call,
I've got a job opening, an offer in Abu Dhabi.
While I was thinking about this,
there's a great chance to go travel,
so I accepted the job right away.
I've had channelled so much money from my salary,
I paid for all my flights and I spent a great deal of time,
literally all my vacations, you know, just to travel.
I'm continuing to produce contents,
I was taking a lot of photos on each of these flights,
documenting, putting true reports down there,
you probably read some of these, then later on,
I realised I'd be sitting on so much content here,
you know cause, there's some ways this content can be used,
in better ways, or they can be monetized,
I became really into social media,
I thought social media was fantastic.
I became a blogger, I became a video blogger,
I became a YouTuber, I became an Instagramer,
I lived through the evolution of internet,
and digital space.
From that time onwards, I made a living with things,
very few people would have considered about.
There are ways to getting some money back from all the
travel expenses I've paid from my contents.
And then fast forward to nearly seven years,
I was paralleling, I was having this burning passion in me,
and I was, you know, earning a consistent
salary in my finance job, and I reached a point,
a painful point that there was two jobs,
the two jobs was hurting each other,
I couldn't do either of them well, you know,
at work I was all thinking about where I'm going next trip,
in the hobby wise, I missed out so much,
because I don't have enough leave,
I didn't have enough holidays
to fulfil all the trips I wanted to do.
And I missed out on a lot of opportunities,
there were also sometimes in life for you to go
to air shows, and such, so they come to a point that I have
to decide what I want to do.
In 2017 April, I finally resigned.
I've gained also financial securities, financial confidence,
from my old job and I'm really thankful for that job,
because that job allows me a bit of financial independence
now, I was able to take the plunge to go down to full time
to pursue, to double down my effort to save up,
I can bear some fruit into my airline blogging job.
The money comes from the contents you create,
so I will think of myself as a content creator.
Every chance you get to create content,
that content may be able to be monetized,
and YouTube is a fantastic platform
that rewards content creators from the minutes they watch,
you know, from the traffic you get,
you do get about 50 percent split with YouTube.
If you get more traffic, more subscribers,
and more watch minutes, the important thing is not quantity,
it's not about number of subscribers,
that's just one aspect, the most important thing,
is your content has good quality.
That's people can watch longer,
you can make money from advertising,
you can also make money from click money.
Click money is monetizing through affiliated marketing.
Let's talk about related travel.
Skyscanner.
You sign up with their affiliate programme,
at the link referral, successful link referral means,
this guy booked through your link,
you get maybe 50 percent of what Skyscanner gets with you.
So if you have a lot of traffic in your blog,
lots of popularity, you might be able to build up,
a substantial amount of money,
which I do see lots of bloggers that do so,
and some bloggers do the credit card sign ups,
because credit card companies pay a handsome,
amount of money for you each time.
You just need to be very good at this kind of information,
but what's the most important thing here is,
how do you get that popularity to have that critical mass
to support you, so if you want to have a successful blog,
a successful channel,
you've got to think about your audience always.
Your audience and your supporters,
like you guys for me here, you guys are really,
all of you are my boss.
I have to think of you, I have to provide some benefits,
information or entertainment, whatever the way is.
I have to return the benefit back to you,
so you guys will be continuing to support,
and build up more and more for me.
So there's back end, getting the content out there
that people start watching it,
and then getting the money from advertising,
from click money, the front end, what's the front end?
The front end is actually just very simple,
from your sponsors, you might have a product,
a company come and sponsor you.
You put it on your blog space or your YouTube video,
how are you going to maintain objectivity,
when you are reviewing flights,
because I've taken delivery flights,
I've taken invitation and, you know, people think that,
"Oh you've taken something, a benefit from people,
you have to write something good about it."
Right, you have to write only good things about it,
and I disagree with that.
You know why?
Because I think we're living in an age right now,
we can clearly see what is the brand new content,
and what is not.
I think that the video power is so strong,
you don't hide anything from a video,
you're viewers are not stupid, your viewer,
your viewers really can tell what is good,
and what is not good.
So long as you remain truthful, remain authentic,
stick with your opinion and views that, you know,
your viewers will mostly agree with you.
Earlier to my point, the sponsorship will reflect,
think about from a content point of view,
you do or you don't do it.
If you don't do it, we might have one less content to show,
and maybe there's no one to create that content,
if I don't do it, you know, so, you've got
to think from a comprehensive angle to come around.
(mumbles)
- How do you ultimately gain network connections
to the airline so that you get the delivery flight,
or the invitation suite events?
- It takes time to build that connections,
maybe I think the best way you will want to build is
to start LinkedIn.
I think LinkedIn really helps you out to,
lots of business people, like I also meet lots of people,
on LinkedIn as well, but before you even go to LinkedIn,
you need to do a lot of work,
cause a lot of people just think, "I want to be like you."
But it's not something you can just get one shot,
and get rich or one shot you get there.
It takes so many little, little steps,
and so many step backs to, you know,
to get forward and going and going and up and down,
up and down, up and down, so there's no one way,
or simple way, so you might get invited to delivery flight,
that means you're gonna have,
you're gonna represent some values there,
the airline or whoever, the organiser,
seeks that value from you.
So you're going to think through their angle,
what kind of value I can offer them to be worthwhile,
to be valuable on one of these flights.
Airline CEO from Delta Airlines, Ed Bastian,
he told a YouTuber, "You guys are great,
you guys are AvGeek."
Aviation geeks, you can free market on us.
You know, and I laugh, I totally agree,
we're so into aviation, we're so passionate about it,
we go beyond, above beyond, to get the angle right,
to re-shoot, to retake, to get this right,
and get that right, we spend all our flight,
documenting the flight, in return,
we're actually paying for that air ticket as well, so,
you know, you're doing them a double favour,
they're earning your money, they're earning your content,
as well, because you're so into that,
you remain so truthful to yourself,
you're gonna gain the respect from your followers,
your followers are gonna like what you're doing.
While I was on this, world's longest flight,
two to three weeks ago on Singapore Airlines flight
S221 from New York to Singapore, 18 hours.
I chose, voluntarily,
I chose to have a premium economy seat.
I genuinely want to test, a stress test myself and the plane
to see how people fare 18 hours.
We know that there's beautiful flat beds,
beautiful five-star cuisine in front,
but we wanted to see about people how,
you know, the majority of people travel in the back for
18 hours on the longest flight, how do they survive that?
So I made a video of that during the flight,
I spent a lot of hours just to look for content,
without a window, so while I was shooting content,
I slept five hours, I rested pretty well, when I land,
you know, everyone go home, go get a hotel have a rest,
I go to the hotel and start putting my content on there,
cause there was a responsibility,
there's lots of people waiting for it,
even during the flight I was using their Wi-Fi settings
to post pictures on Instagram for Instagram followers,
and I think there were lots of people waiting to see,
this is hot news, you gotta do it before it get cold.
So I started adding to my video,
I slept at midnight for five hours, then I woke up again,
I start working at five A.M. next day trying
to get that video out.
I finally got that video out at noon, and two hours later,
I fly out of Singapore, so,
there was a great sense of responsibility you built in,
you want to present them and give them the best experience.
My year was to present my aviation travel
experience with my audience,
not all the audience can fly together with me,
but throughout the video, I hope they can enjoy.
I receive a lot of email from the less fortunate people
that they never flew on a plane before,
or some people have fear of flying, so the next time,
when I go to different countries,
especially going to developing countries,
I want to bring them together with me next time
to fly together, so, I want them to have
that lifetime experience of flying,
at least once in their lifetime they flew,
and I really think sharing is caring,
and this is important that, you know,
your audience made you who you are, and it's time
to return something back together,
and having more fun together.
(audience applause)
(upbeat acoustic music)
Sharing is caring, it's time to share my aviation
experience together with my followers.
This is my biggest giveaway.
I will fly with you to enjoy the flight experience together.
There will be five winners in total in this giveaway.
The giveaway link is in the video description.
Good luck and let's enjoy aviation together.
(upbeat music)