3 March, 2021

Westlake Boys trio take off in the Airforce

Three former students of Westlake Boys High School had an unexpected reunion when they trained together to become Royal New Zealand Air Force pilots.

Flying Officers Denzel Williams and Aaron Kurte, both aged 24, and Flying Officer Tyler Waters, 25, graduated last month.

Kurte and Williams were in the same year at Westlake and played hockey together, with Waters in the year above them. They took different paths after school, before joining the RNZAF in 2018, with a shared ambition to fly.

Kurte made coffee as a barista while he saved for private flying training and did some travelling. Williams did odd jobs for a few years and also travelled with Kurte before signing up for the Airforce. Waters studied for a mechanical engineering degree at Auckland University, where he graduated with honours.

“We didn’t coordinate it,” said Waters of ending upon the same course together. “Flying was always something I dreamed about, but I joined [the RNZAF] as an engineer originally. Then I decided to change direction,” he said.

Kurte missed out on his first application into the RNZAF to become a pilot, but after some travelling and learning to fly he decided to reapply and was successful. “I think the additional maturity helped,” he said.

Williams assessed himself as not being ready to join when he left school. He waited for a couple of years and then began to study computer science at university in tandem with applying to he RNZAF for pilot training. “Then I got the call that I had been accepted and that was it, I was out the door.”

All three said that while the intense course schedule challenged them, the instructors were an integral part of their success. “They supported us all through the tough times and really worked hard to help us succeed,” said Waters.

The new pilots graduated a little later than expected due to the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020, when they were unable to fly for several weeks during the course.

“Coming back in, picking up from where you left off and getting back into the mode of flying was hard, but the instructors were great at getting us all back on track,” Williams said.

The three and six coursemates who graduated at the same time will now either be posted to the RNZAF rotary wing fleet and learn to fly the Augusta A109 Light Utility Helicopter or train at No. 42 Squadron on the Beechcraft B200 King Air. The helicopter pilots will then go on to fly the NH-90 or Seasprite helicopters at No. 3 or No. 6 Squadron respectively, while the multi-engine pilots will go on to fly either the Hercules or Boeing 757 at No. 40 Squadron, or the Orion at No. 5 Squadron.

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