Joseph Diebolder (Captain Joe)

Joseph Diebolder is a popular pilot and YouTuber.

He has more than 1.5 million subscribers on his YouTube channel by name, Captain Joe.

Introduction-

Joseph Diebolder (Joe Diebolder alias Joey) was born in 1984.

His home town is Munich, Germany but he also grew up in the United Kingdom.

Joe’s mother, Janet is a dentist and hails from Chesterfield, England and later, she settled in Germany.

His father is German and he is also a dentist.

Joe has a younger sister.

Love for planes-

Joe’s godfather, Alastair used to work as an air traffic controller at Heathrow Airport, England.

He was very interested in planes and this interest rubbed off on him.

Deciding to become a pilot-

At 14, one of Joe’s family friends invited him to travel in his Aviat Eagle (Christen Eagle) biplane aircraft.

Just after the plane took off, he handed Joe the controls and he loved the view from the top and at that moment, he decided that he would grow up to become a pilot.

Education-

Joe completed his schooling in Germany.

And then, for a year, he did social work by working as a paramedic.

As his parents wanted him to become a dentist, Joe joined a German university to study dentistry.

Even while studying dentistry, he was more interested in planes than dentistry.

In 2005, Joe got his Private Pilot Licence (PPL) in Austria.

Flying school-

While studying dentistry, Joe used to sneak away from his university to visit a little airfield in Leutkirch im Allgäu.

Here, he started attending a flying school without the knowledge of his parents and started flying Cessna aircraft.

Cessna 152 was the first aircraft that Joe flew to learn flying.

Here, his instructor appreciated his flying talent and opined that he could choose aviation as his career.

Thanks to this, Joe quit his dentistry course to attend a flying school full-time.

An interesting fact- Popular pilot YouTubers, Petter Hörnfeldt, Kelsey Hughes, and Tucker Gott, also flew Cessna 152 aircraft.

From Germany to the United States-

Then, in 2006, Joe attended a flying school in Düsseldorf, Germany for Commercial Pilot Licence (CPL) and airline transport pilot licence (ATPL) and completed his theory here.

Later, he attended FlightSafety Academy in Vero Beach, Florida, United States for his practical flight training.

For him, getting training in the United States was cheaper than that in Germany.

It cost Joe around €60,000 for pilot training.

He began his training in 2007 and completed his training in 2009.

After completing his training at 23, Joe returned to Germany and converted his American licence to a German one.

It took him six years to repay his loans.

Career-

In 2008, Joe started applying for jobs at airlines but as the economy wasn’t good, he couldn’t secure a job.

In 2009, he luckily met a person in a pub who offered him the job of a skydiving pilot with Skydive Nuggets in Leutkirch im Allgäu, Germany.

A couple of days later, Joe started his class rating on a Pilatus PC-6 Porter and became a skydiving pilot.

Here, he started flying the Pilatus PC-6 Porter and his job involved flying the skydivers.

Joe worked for Skydive Nuggets for a year and during that time, he lived at his parents’ home.

Executive flying-

Then, Joe quit this job and did executive flying for a year in Düsseldorf and here, he worked as a commercial pilot and flew the Beechcraft King Air.

Here, the airline didn’t have flight attendants, so he used to vacuum clean the plane himself after landing.

Thanks to all his jobs, Joe acquired 500 hours on propeller driven planes which later helped him to secure a job with Air Berlin.

Working for Air Berlin-

In 2010, Joe joined Air Berlin and worked for eight years.

Here, he flew the Airbus A320 airliners.

While working for Air Berlin, Joe worked at different locations like Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Munich.

Unfortunately, he lost his job as Air Berlin got shut down due to insolvency and due to this, he was unemployed for five months.

Joining Cargolux-

Joe got a job offer from Cargolux, a cargo airline.

As he was required to fly the Boeing 747 airliners, he took a crash course to familiarise himself with flying Boeing 747.

After studying hard, Joe passed the screening test and passed other tests like psychometric tests, multitasking exercises, group and role plays, etc. and secured a job with Cargolux.

And since then, he has been working for Cargolux and has been flying Boeing 747-400 and Boeing 747-8 airliners.

Here, once Joe transported 2 Belugas whales from China to Iceland.

Personal life-

Joe’s girlfriend’s name is Gina.

He resides in Memmingen, a 100 km west of Munich in Bavaria, Germany.

An interesting fact- Niklas Christl, a famous YouTuber also hails from Bavaria.

His YouTube channel-

Joe’s father advised him to start a YouTube channel about aviation.

So, on 25 September 2014, Joe started a YouTube channel by name, Captain Joe.

He also has a website.

On 28 November 2021, Joe published a book titled- READ and DO: 100 Checklists to become a better version of yourself!

Some interesting facts about Joe-

• Since his childhood, Joe has been a music lover. He grew up listening to The Beatles.
• He has also been a car fanatic since his childhood and loves restoring vintage cars.
• Joe’s favourite planes are Boeing 747, Airbus A350, Douglas DC-3, Beechcraft Super King Air and his favourite military aircraft is Panavia Tornado.
• He is a polyglot and can speak English and German and he is tall at 184cm.
• On 25 January 2022, Joe delivered a TEDx Talk.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Joe Diebolder?

Share with me in the comment section below.

Also read- Inspiring Biography of Petter Hörnfeldt (Mentour Pilot)