Question: What made you want to be a flight director?

Columbus Flight Directors answered on 10 Oct 2015:

Sergio:
Hi Lord Bendtner and therazalution,
in my case, I started working for Columbus (not yet as a Flight Director) almost by chance, and at the time I wouldn’t really know if I liked the job or not. But after a while I realized that I really liked it and wanted to stay.

The Flight Director is a great job, because when you sit in control room all the activities and the life of the astronauts is under your responsibility. We have the responsibility to make the mission a success.
This can also turn bad in some situations, you might find yourself in a situation where urgent decisions have to be taken, and the Flight Director is the one taking thos decisions, supported by a great team of flight controllers. This is something really exciting.

So when, after some years, they offered me the position of Flight Director, I was really honored to take it! 🙂

Simon:
Hi guys! pretty similar to Sergio. Ever since seeing Apollo 13 I thought it would be cool to be a flight director. I started to work Columbus as a part of the Engineering Support Team. I was working very close to the Columbus Flight Directors and realised that the coordination work I was doing with the Engineers to solve problems was very similar to the flight directors but just with a different team and in different time scales. I applied and was accepted!

I love working a problem on-console with my team and solving it so the Astronauts can complete their activities!