The world’s first dedicated aviation memoir archive
Every aviation professional carries stories the sky gave them. Near-misses never filed. Lessons no simulator was ever programmed with. Moments that changed how they understood the profession — and then went to the grave with them. This is where those stories live. Permanently. Freely. For ever.
The simplest publishing process in aviation. You write it. We assign it a call sign. We publish it. It lives for ever.
The aerodrome at Zaria in the 1980s was a particular kind of Nigerian place — practical, unpretentious, and quietly extraordinary. The runway ran alongside the compound of the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology, so that the boundary between learning to fly and learning to control was not an institutional border but a chain-link fence.
On one side of that fence: the ATC and COMS school, where I arrived as an assistant, learning the frequency, learning the tower, learning the controlled discipline of managing airspace through voice and position reports. On the other side: NCAT’s flying school — different instructors entirely, different equipment, different professional grammar. Two worlds sharing one compound. Two disciplines that the aviation system treats as separate, that the geography of Zaria made neighbouring.
I did not arrive in aviation by design. I arrived at Zaria. And the room would not let me go.
I joined ZAC — the Zaria Aero Club — and earned my PPL on the retired NCAT Cessna 150s. Member AC 25, SP 22 Standard Pilot. I built my hours while working ATC at Lagos Murtala Muhammed International Airport, sitting on one side of the frequency managing the movements of aircraft while on my days off I was on the other side, learning what it felt like to be managed.
Years later, at ZAC, I met Yinka. A club member who had come from London. We played Scrabble on his desktop computer. And then one day, on that same desktop, I saw Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 — and something happened in my understanding of what was possible that I have never recovered from and never want to recover from. The screen showed an aircraft cockpit. Every instrument I had learned to read from the controlling side of the frequency was now laid out in front of me from the pilot’s perspective. The thought that formed was not gradual. It was instant: So I can access the aircraft this easily?
Searchable by ICAO prefix, role, and era. Every entry permanent. Every story free to read.
Every memoir carries the ICAO aircraft registration prefix of the author’s country — the same language aviation uses to identify every aircraft on earth, now used to identify every story.
The call sign system is aviation’s own language applied to aviation’s own memory. A Nigerian pilot reading 5N-M-001 knows immediately: this story comes from a Nigerian colleague. A British controller reading G-M-001 knows: this is one of ours. No explanation required. The prefix speaks for itself.
When ICAO member states adopt the Memoir SARP proposed in the White Paper, the register will become the world’s most comprehensive aviation professional knowledge database — organised by the country system that aviation already uses every day.
Every other institution in aviation asks professionals to report incidents through official channels. DomisLink makes a different offer. Send us your story — the real one — and we will give it a permanent home, a permanent call sign, and a permanent audience of the aviation community that most needs to read it.
DomisLink International Services Ltd hereby makes the following standing offer to every aviation professional worldwide:
Submit your memoir. We will publish it.
Any aviation professional — pilot, controller, engineer, inspector, dispatcher, cabin crew member, or aviation worker of any discipline, from any country, in any era — who submits a memoir to DomisLink International Services Ltd will have that memoir reviewed, formatted, and published at aviation-memoir.domislink.com at no cost to the author.
Submissions may be made under the author’s full name, under a professional pseudonym, or in complete anonymity. The only requirement is that the content reflects genuine professional experience in civil aviation.
DomisLink does not own the memoir. The author retains full copyright. DomisLink serves as publisher and permanent custodian — committed to keeping the record accessible, searchable, and permanently available to the global aviation community.
The library is open. The first entry is posted. Send your story.
Six principles. They protect you, the archive, and the profession — and give your story the shape it needs to be heard.
Not every story begins easily. The AI assistant below can help you find your opening, structure your account, or answer questions about what belongs in a memoir. Powered by Claude.
Every submission is reviewed personally by the Editor-in-Chief. Here is exactly what happens from the moment your story arrives.
Fill in what you are comfortable sharing. Every field except the memoir text is optional. Your call sign will be assigned and confirmed upon publication.
The DomisLink Aviation Memoir Archive has one editor. Not a committee. Not an algorithm. One person who reads every submission personally — because the only qualification for judging whether an aviation memoir is genuine is twenty-five years of having lived what it describes.
F/O Amaechi Ubadike holds simultaneously a Commercial Pilot Licence, an Air Traffic Controller rating, and an Aviation Safety Inspector designation in Personnel Licensing — one of the rarest triple qualifications in African aviation. He has worked every significant aviation posting in Nigeria. He has stood at the scene of major accidents as an NCAA Inspector. He has sat behind the frequency, behind the controls, and behind the inspector’s desk.
An aviation memoir contains details that only another aviation professional can assess correctly. The difference between a technical observation that illuminates a safety lesson and a specific vulnerability that must not be published. The difference between a colleague described by role and a colleague identifiable by context. The difference between honest professional testimony and a document that could expose the author to professional or legal risk.
Twenty-five years of professional experience in three aviation disciplines is the editorial qualification this archive requires. That is what the Editor-in-Chief brings to every submission that arrives at memoir@domislink.com.
Every memoir submitted to this archive will be read by a person who has spent a career in the same industry the author served. Your story will be understood by someone who knows what it means. It will be protected by someone who knows what it costs to tell it. And it will be published by someone who knows why it matters.
— F/O Amaechi Ubadike, Editor-in-Chief · memoir@domislink.com
The aerodrome at Zaria in the 1980s was a particular kind of Nigerian place — practical, unpretentious, and quietly extraordinary. The runway ran alongside the compound of the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology, so that the boundary between learning to fly and learning to control was not an institutional border but a chain-link fence. On one side: the ATC and COMS school, where I arrived as an assistant, learning the frequency, learning the tower, learning the controlled discipline of managing airspace through voice and position reports. These were ATC and communications instructors — a distinct world with a distinct professional grammar entirely their own. On the other side: NCAT’s flying school — different instructors, different equipment, the smell of avgas rather than radio sets, the sensation of controlled descent rather than the geometry of separation.
When NCAT upgraded its fleet and retired its Cessna 150s to ZAC, I joined the Zaria Aero Club. I earned my PPL on those retired aircraft — Member AC 25, SP 22 Standard Pilot — trained by flying instructors whose classroom was the aircraft, not the control room. Two disciplines. Two sets of teachers. One compound. And a young man crossing quietly from one world into the other, understanding both from the inside simultaneously.
I built my hours while working ATC at Lagos Murtala Muhammed International Airport — the busiest airport in West Africa — where I managed the movements of aircraft on the frequency while on my days off I was on the other side of it, learning what it felt like to be managed. There is a particular education that comes only from inhabiting both roles. The pilot who has never worked a control position sees ATC as a service provider. The controller who has never flown sees the cockpit as a black box. I saw both from the inside, and what I saw was not opposition but partnership — two professions jointly responsible for every aircraft that lifts and lands safely.
The Lagos Aero Club was at Magbo Aerodrome, along Badagry Road near the toll-gate. I last heard that people have built on the place. A runway that trained Nigerian pilots is now under concrete. I do not say this as an anecdote. I say it as a diagnosis.
At ZAC I met Yinka. A club member who had come from London. We used to play Scrabble on his desktop computer — the easy companionship of colleagues with time between sessions. And then one day, on that same desktop, I saw Microsoft Flight Simulator 98. The screen showed an aircraft cockpit. Every instrument I had learned to read from the controlling side of the frequency was now laid out in front of me from the pilot’s perspective. The thought that formed was not gradual. It was instant, and it was several thoughts simultaneously: So I can access the aircraft this easily? So I can do what pilots do? So I could fly — really fly — instruments, procedures, the whole thing?
The answer to every one of those questions was yes. And I have been answering yes ever since.
I became a Microsoft patronizer. I bought FS98. I updated to Flight Simulator 2000. Then 2004. Then FSX. I self-taught the Boeing 737. I flew it until the landings were not merely acceptable but precise. I flew continent to continent. No fuel cost. No weather cancellation. No meter running. I estimate, conservatively, thirty thousand hours of simulator time across those years.
When I came to flying school, there were those who saw my passion for the simulator and called it what they thought it was: You are playing games. The harmattan that closed the sky for student pilots at NCAT, grounding the programme for days, did not ground me — because my simulator did not need visibility or wind conditions or serviceable aircraft. I kept flying while others waited. And when we were finally in the same aircraft, doing the same manœuvres, being assessed by the same instructors — my performance spoke for itself. The confidence that thirty thousand unlogged hours had built was not subtle. It was sometimes, I am told, to the annoyance of some course mates.
I could not have earned my captainship anywhere but in those simulators. The machines that many active flying pilots have never touched gave me everything freely, at the cost of nothing but electricity and the willingness to keep learning.
My career took me across this country in ways that few aviation professionals experience — not as a passenger moving between airports, but as a controller and inspector working the system from the inside: Zaria. Lagos. Port Harcourt. Maiduguri. Bonny. Forcados Terminal. Each posting a different Nigeria. Each a different relationship between geography, weather, human settlement, and the aircraft moving overhead. Nothing prepared me for the Niger Delta the way the Niger Delta prepares you for itself. The vegetation alone — that layered, dense, insistent green — tells you immediately that this is not terrain that forgives error.
On 3 October 2013, I was at my desk at the NCAA annexe office when the call came. The crash site was approximately 150 metres from where I sat. I was almost instantly at the scene. An Embraer 120 belonging to Associated Aviation, chartered to carry the body of former Governor Olusegun Agagu of Ondo State from Lagos to Akure for burial, had lifted from Runway 18L at 09:32 and never made altitude. Less than a minute after wheels-up, the aircraft impacted terrain in a near-vertical bank, coming to rest against the fence of the Joint Users Hydrant Installation — the aviation fuel compound between the domestic and international terminals. Sixteen of the twenty people on board died.
Among the crew was a man I knew. The Captain. A man slightly shorter than average height, dark in complexion, taciturn by nature — a quiet, inward character. A professional. I knew him well. The fire response was immediate — FAAN, the oil company emergency teams, others from surrounding departments. The fuel premises did not ignite; the prompt response of the emergency teams prevented what the geography of the crash site had made terrifyingly possible.
I will be honest about what the moment demanded. I was overwhelmed. That is the word, and it is the accurate one. Twenty-five years in aviation safety teaches you procedure. What it does not fully prepare you for is arriving at a scene where the Captain in the wreckage is someone whose face you know.
I write this memoir as the first entry in the archive that DomisLink is building — not because my story is the most important in Nigerian aviation, but because the founder’s memoir belongs first in the library the founder built.
Every subsequent entry will carry more weight than mine. The anonymous ATC who files his near-miss story at 3am because he has never found another channel. The retired engineer who finally writes down the maintenance pattern that haunted the last decade of her career. The first officer from Ethiopia or Singapore or Brazil who submits the account of the flight that changed everything — in whatever language comes most naturally, in whatever form feels most true.
The library needs those stories. The profession needs those stories. The next generation of aviation professionals needs to inherit not just the certifications and the regulations and the checklists, but the living knowledge of what the sky actually asked of the generation before them.
The fence at Zaria is still there. I am still on both sides of it.