Ritchie de Montalk: The man who helped thousands fly over 34 years

“Do you still remember your first solo flight, Ritchie?” I ask.  

Newly retired Ritchie de Montalk chuckes, “I certainly do, I was 16, I remember it clearly in Greymouth many years ago. It was a lovely early summer’s day, perfect weather.”  

“It was just a grass field in those days, no runways, didn’t have radio in the airplane.” 

He laughs at himself, “I remember I did two circuits on my own. I felt very important after that.” 

Now, with a long successful career behind him, Ritchie is retiring after 34 (and don’t forget a half) years of work at Massey’s Aviation School.  

Massey’s Aviation school has been around for 38 years, meaning Ritchie has been around for almost as long as the school itself. It’s still New Zealand’s only university with an Aviation school.  

Upon retirement, he is leaving his role as the chief of standards. His job was to set and maintain the standards of flight training throughout the school.  

He tells me becoming a pilot today is very different to what it was like when he studied back in the early 1960s. Back then you could do self-study, or you could go to Auckland or Whanganui’s commercial pilot training schools. 

Ritchie took the other alternative – to train as an Airforce pilot. From there he worked as a top-dressing pilot, who are usually tasked with flying agricultural aircrafts to apply fertilizer and other materials to farmlands.  

He then took his craft overseas, working for an airline in Africa for 10 years. After his decade stint overseas, he came back to Aotearoa and worked for the Civil Aviation division of the Ministry of Transport as an operations inspector.  

Finally, he came to Massey Aviation.  

After dedicating much of his career to the university, he didn’t miss a beat before saying the thing he’d miss the most is “The students. As you get older its actually quite rewarding dealing with students, and there’s some pretty bright cookies out there.” 

“It's nice to be able to help them.” 

I ask how many students he’s seen become pilots, he says, “It would be in the thousands.” 

He also loved being able to mentor instructors, particularly junior instructors as their careers progressed.  

“Most of our flying instructors are graduates themselves.” 

With the Aviation school being around for almost 40 years, Ritchie says it is starting to breed its own instructors and train them in house. “Their fully familiar with the course themselves, so that’s good.”  

While Ritchie doesn’t like to “dabble” in social media, he’s been receiving messages and well wishes. “That’s very rewarding. You don’t realise you have such an effect on people.” 

Though Ritchie is retired, he will always have a love for aviation.  

“But I’ve got other interests to develop too... I’m building a boat at the moment.”  

“I’ve always been keen on sailing, and I like model building, model airplanes, model boats, so it gives me more time for that.” 

To end our interview, I thought I’d try my luck with a sneaky request: “Do you think Massey would ever let me get on one of the planes?”  

“I don’t see why not, you’re keen to have a go are you?” Ritchie says, “That could be arranged, we could talk to the right people.”