Meet John Krijgsman our new Maintenance Manager Capetown (CTP)
My name is John Krijgsman, 56 years old and happily married to Jeanet. I recently started as the new maintenance manager in Cape Town.
I have been working in the aviation business for almost 40 years. The first 9 years at Fokker aircraft company and the last 30 years at KLM. I started in hangar 14 as a cabin maintenance mechanic on the B747 classic. I immediately felt at home, great colleagues and good working atmosphere. At Fokker I used to work on the F50 and F100 so to see a B747 for the first time was amazing.
In 2010 I switched from Hangar 14 to Line Maintenance Schiphol. First as a ground engineer, later as a lead ground engineer. In the last 15 years I visited so many places as a relief engineer and one of the best relief experiences I had was in Johannesburg. I was there for almost two months and me and my wife fell in love with South Africa.
Outside work I have several passions, one of them is Formule 1. Every season I try to visit at least one race and up till now I have visited all the circuits in Europe and also visited Mexico, China, Russia, Malaysia, Mexico and Brazil. Furthermore, ever since I was young I'm a huge fan of ADO Den Haag. It's a soccer team playing in the second division and they lose more games than that they win but.....who cares.
I have been a lead engineer for the last 12 years and when I got the opportunity to become a maintenance manager I was thrilled. For me it's the next step in my career. I'm looking forward meeting so many new people in a totally new environment. I think the biggest challenge in the upcoming period is to expand the Cape Town station, we could really use at least two new ground engineers to join my team so if you are in the possession of an EASA aml and willing to move to Cape Town then you now know who to contact.Hey, you just created a text paragraph! Somebody once said that the pen is mightier than the sword — and that was in 1839. Just imagine, with the power of cutting-edge content experiences and the ability to distribute your content around the world in mere seconds, writing this paragraph could be one of the most influential things you ever do!
Like I said, the opportunity to become a maintenance manager is great, to be an MM in Cape Town is even more then great. Jeanet and I have been frequent travellers to South-Africa and travelled throughout the entire country the last 10 years. There is no real bucket-list of things we want to see or explore but I hope to visit a rugby game from the Springbokkies in the DHL stadium. I don't know all the rules of the game, but the atmosphere is great when I watch it on the television.
Finally, besides a great change for us to live and work in beautiful Cape Town there will also be things we will be missing.
First of all, my mother, sister and our kids and also our friends. Secondly, herring with onion. It's a typical Dutch delicacy that almost no one likes outside The Netherlands.
John and Jeanet