Erica Chbeir holds two careers that rarely appear on the same CV. She is a trained dentist, and she has spent eight years flying commercial aircraft. Today she sits in the cockpit at Middle East Airlines, responsible for around 250 passengers on each flight.
A game she played with her brother
Her interest in flying started at home. As a child, she spent hours on flight simulators with her brother, treating the cockpit as a game rather than a goal.
"I used to play simulators at home with my brother, and I never thought it would actually become my job," she says.
When it came time to choose a path, she went into dentistry. Aviation stayed in the back of her mind, a dream she never fully let go of.
The newspaper ad in her fifth year
The turning point came during her fifth year of dental school. Her father handed her a newspaper carrying an MEA advertisement recruiting pilots.
The timing was far from easy. She still had eight exams left in her final year. Instead of choosing one path, she decided to pursue both.
Right after graduating as a dentist, she joined aviation school in Spain.
"They won't take women"
Outside her family, almost nobody backed the plan. The warning she heard again and again was that the airline would not take women.
Training brought its own pressure, with new rules to learn and men almost everywhere she looked. The hardest part was believing in the plan when nobody else did.
From 500 passengers in Europe to 250 at home
At 24, already a dentist, she flew her first flight as a pilot.
Her career then took her to Europe, where she was responsible for up to 500 passengers per flight. Over eight years, she has built experience on four Airbus aircraft types: the A320, the A321, the A330, and the A350.
Today she flies with MEA, the same airline whose newspaper ad set everything in motion, and carries around 250 passengers on each flight.
A dentist in the cockpit
Her path breaks the usual rule of picking one career and sticking with it. She finished a demanding dental degree, then started over in a field where she was told she did not belong.
Eight years later, both titles are still hers: dentist and pilot.
Follow Erica's journey from the clinic to the cockpit on Instagram.
