It’s 5:43 a.m., and the runways at Reagan National Airport are already roaring with exercise.
Plane engines thunder. Trucks beep as they again up. A shearing sound echoes within the distance.
But First Officer Netanel Draiblate has no downside tuning out the noise. He’s laser-focused on the duty at hand: ensuring the Chicago-bound 737 he’s about to fly is prepared for its 6:30 a.m. takeoff.
The pilot shines the brilliant beam of a flashlight as he walks across the tarmac and inspects the plane. Then he heads inside to start a rapid-fire sequence of checks. A click-click-click as he flips change after change on the management panel punctuates the regular hum of the aircraft’s energy system.
“This,” Draiblate says, “is almost like warming up for a concert.”
He is aware of that routine, too. Draiblate can also be an expert violinist, and the method of tuning and mentally making ready for a efficiency is simply as acquainted to him because the exact pre-flight procedures for a industrial jet.
He’s usually on stage when he’s not within the cockpit. The 43-year-old studied music for many years earlier than he took his first flying lesson. And now he’s a United Airlines pilot — and heading into his seventeenth season because the concertmaster of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra.
These two elite jobs, piloting passenger jets and serving to lead an orchestra as its high musician, might sound like they’ve little in widespread. But Draiblate says they share some placing similarities. And at a time when extra Americans are taking over second jobs and forging career paths that don’t match into a conventional field, this pilot and violinist says he’s completely happy he’s discovered a brand new sense of stability in his life.
On this July morning, his violin is tucked away in storage in the back of the cockpit as he discusses the flight plan with the aircraft’s captain. Over the subsequent few days, he’ll fly to 5 cities in 4 states and apply music for hours inside lodge rooms throughout the nation.
A live performance is shortly approaching. For the primary time, he’ll be enjoying in an unlikely location that blends each his careers.
Draiblate was at Newark Liberty International Airport just a few months in the past when somebody caught his consideration: another musician, additionally toting a violin as he went via the TSA safety line.
Paul Huang, an acclaimed New York-based violinist who ceaselessly performs with orchestras and different ensembles world wide, was on his strategy to carry out at a music competition in Japan.
The two violinists had by no means met earlier than however found they’d many associates in widespread. And a professor who’d taught Draiblate had additionally been one in all Huang’s mentors.
“OK,” Huang thought to himself, “this guy is serious.”
Draiblate had an concept. “Hey, I want to show you something,” he mentioned. He took Huang to see a small stage in a ready space of Terminal C. “Next time you’re at the airport, let me know,” he mentioned, “and maybe you and I can play something.”
Huang had by no means performed in an airport earlier than. But he’d as soon as performed the National Anthem at an NFL game, and he’d seen how highly effective it may be to play classical music in an surprising venue. That week he despatched Draiblate his schedule, and the 2 started planning their efficiency.
“I was just elated with the idea that he’s so passionate about this,” Huang says.
For Draiblate, who’s identified to followers of the Annapolis Symphony by his nickname, Nati, enjoying violin has been a lifelong ardour.
He grew up in Israel with dad and mom who had been each skilled violinists, and at 5 years previous he remembers begging to start out classes. His mother, who additionally taught violin, insisted he wait another yr till he was extra disciplined. But she struck a take care of her son.
Every evening, she’d make house in his mattress and place the violin case beside him.
“I would refuse to go to sleep if it wasn’t there,” Draiblate recollects.
At 6, she gave him his first lesson, and his love for the violin solely grew from there. As his coaching intensified, his ardour for efficiency ultimately introduced him to the United States, the place he studied on the Chicago College of Performing Arts and the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University earlier than happening to earn a doctorate on the University of Maryland. In 2010, he landed a job as concertmaster of the Annapolis Symphony.
Draiblate’s expertise and management capacity had been instantly clear, in keeping with José-Luis Novo, the symphony’s conductor and creative director.
“The position of concertmaster is very important in the orchestra, and difficult to get, because you need someone that is very competent technically and musically playing the violin, but also you need someone that can lead and also someone that can follow the conductor,” Novo says.
Draiblate’s “wonderful tone” and his dedication to the music additionally make him a standout performer, Novo says. “I’ve never seen him playing halfway.”
Like many musicians, Draiblate discovered himself juggling quite a few gigs. He was the highest violinist in a number of orchestras across the nation, instructing and main the symphony’s music academy.
But he wasn’t wanting so as to add another career to the combo — till he obtained an surprising piece of recommendation.
Frank Kennedy was impressed. The director and chief flight teacher on the Navy Annapolis Flight Center is a former 747 captain and an ex-fighter pilot, and he’s seen loads of folks on the controls of a aircraft.
When he flew with Draiblate, he noticed potential. The similar expertise that made him a robust chief onstage made him a extremely disciplined pilot.
“He was quite remarkable, to be honest,” Kennedy says. “His attention to detail, the ability to adapt to your environment, decision-making. He had that ability. He was very decision-oriented.”
Draiblate had beloved planes virtually so long as he’d beloved the violin. He’d doodle them ceaselessly as a child and picked up fashions of plane he flew in on household journeys. But it wasn’t till 2018 {that a} buddy gave him his first flying lesson.
“I got hooked,” Draiblate recollects. The years he’d spent coaching as a violinist made the learning and memorization expertise wanted to turn out to be a pilot come naturally. But on the time, he saved signing up for extra classes as a passion, hoping perhaps sometime to personal a four-seat Cessna he may fly with associates on the weekends.
His ambitions began to shift after a flight examination in 2019, when he met Kennedy for the primary time. Draiblate remembers Kennedy asking what he did for a dwelling, and being baffled by the violinist’s response describing his music career.
“He looked at me with very inquisitive eyes and he was like, ‘That’s all great, but what do you do for a living?’ He told me, ‘You can still do a lot of those things, but you should be an airline pilot.’”
Draiblate didn’t deny how a lot he beloved flying, however he identified what number of musical commitments had been on his plate. Kennedy helped him see an alternate he’d by no means thought of. He may focus his music career on performing within the symphony, main its academy and performing a number of occasions a yr with a DC-based chamber orchestra. And if he put aside a number of of his different music gigs, he may additionally pursue a career as a pilot.
Eventually, Draiblate made that pitch to the symphony’s board.
Novo says he was shortly satisfied.
“We needed to give him the opportunity to follow his dream. … If we had resisted, he might have decided to leave the orchestra. I think that would have been a great loss for us,” he says.
With the symphony’s blessing, Draiblate started working as a industrial airline pilot in November 2022. And he’s been a primary officer for United since April 2025. He estimates he flies round 18 days monthly, usually taking last-minute assignments as a junior pilot on reserve obligation.
Draiblate ceaselessly travels along with his violin so he can apply between concert events. It’s widespread for pilots to produce other abilities outdoors their aviation work, Draiblate says, and he’s come throughout just a few different pilot-musicians on-line.
Still, he’s turn out to be aware of the shocked expressions that flash throughout passengers’ faces once they see him carry out whereas carrying his pilot’s uniform.
He noticed these shocked faces amid the winter holidays in December, when he played at the Denver airport with another United pilot, a captain who’s additionally a pianist.
And he noticed them once more throughout a flight delay in Newark final yr, when he gave an impromptu onboard efficiency whereas ready for the all-clear to fly.
He knew many on the Punta Cana-bound flight had been careworn by the delay and wanting to get to the seashore. So he gave them one thing he hoped would transport them elsewhere within the meantime: Bach.
The first officer stood on the entrance of the 737’s cabin and performed the serene, candy notes of a sonata.
Passengers pulled out their telephones to report the shock solo. Somewhat boy climbed onto his dad’s lap to get a greater view. And when Draiblate performed the final notice, row after row erupted in applause, and a girl in top quality shouted, “Bravo!”
Draiblate smiled, took a short bow and obtained prepared for takeoff.
Being a pilot has come in useful throughout his career as a violinist, too.
He as soon as flew a soloist who’d simply carried out with the orchestra to Washington Dulles International Airport, avoiding the DC space’s infamous freeway visitors.
Novo, the Annapolis Symphony conductor, says he’s observed that Draiblate’s career as a pilot has made him much more organized and environment friendly when planning occasions and discussing orchestra enterprise.
“There is a crossover between being a pilot and being a concertmaster,” Novo says. “There are a lot of things that you have to take care of at once.”
And now, when he takes the stage, Draiblate says he approaches performing with a unique perspective.
“You just operated a piece of machinery and took it up 30,000 feet. Things look very small down below,” he says. “You can go on stage, and nothing bad is going to happen. You’ll be alive at the end of the concert. So it gives you that perspective, and it takes away a lot of the more nervous jitters that you get, so you can focus.”
If Draiblate is harboring any jitters, there’s no signal of them as he heads via the Newark airport safety line on the best way to fulfill Huang, violin in tow.
They’re about to play collectively for the primary time. And they’ve lower than an hour to iron out any kinks earlier than their live performance on the airport’s stage.
In a United convention room tucked away from the commotion of the terminal, the musicians get out their devices and are harmonizing just a few seconds later.
“Amazing!” Huang says as they run via a duet by Italian composer Giovanni Battista Viotti. After just a few fast changes, the 2 are in sync.
Draiblate smiles. Just as he’s discovered to reply swiftly to flight situations as a pilot, as a performer, he’s discovered to hear and adapt.
“All this time following soloists,” he says, “and eventually, you get it.”
“I always follow the orchestra,” Huang laughs.
He asks what it’s like juggling a music career with life as a pilot.
“For us here (at United), things pick up during the holidays in the summer, when the orchestra doesn’t play,” Draiblate says. “It works perfectly.”
To Huang, that concept of stability is smart.
“It’s good to have two things,” he says. “It actually makes you happier on both.”
Draiblate has flown greater than 60 flights out and in of Newark for United. But he’s by no means carried out on the airport’s stage. Today he’s carrying his pilot’s uniform, regardless that he doesn’t have a flight scheduled. He’s excited to have an opportunity to point out others the 2 worlds he loves.
Pilot and passenger play a duet
“I’m waiting for a wave of calm to wash over me,” Jon Gooda tells the musicians as they stroll into the concourse. In the roughly 18 months since United arrange its stage within the Newark terminal, the vice chairman of airport operations has seen passengers and employees members gentle up throughout performances, from youth poetry readings to jazz ensembles to an worker expertise present.
Gooda is aware of the 15,000 United staff within the Newark space have numerous expertise they create to the desk. And he’s excited for passengers right this moment to see another facet of one of many airline’s greater than 19,000 pilots.
It’s a bustling afternoon in one of many nation’s busiest airports and a gradual stream of persons are speeding via the concourse. The high-top tables within the ready space close to the stage are beginning to refill with passengers cramming in fast meals and neon-vest-clad employees on break. The air is filled with the sounds of a whole lot of conversations, the crackling of potato chip baggage and the beeping horns of trams that race by with passengers who’re working late.
Netanel Draiblate performs a duet with Paul Huang on July 13. The violinists first met within the airport safety line in April.
A small crowd gathers because the violinists play their first duet. Draiblate greets them with a heat welcome.
“My name is Nati,” he says. “As you can see, I play the violin, but I also operate one of those wonderful machines.”
He gestures towards planes seen via the floor-to-ceiling home windows behind the stage. It’s an exquisite backdrop.
But the airport’s acoustics throughout rush hour on a Monday afternoon are much less supreme.
As Draiblate speaks, it isn’t lengthy earlier than he’s drowned out by blaring bulletins warning passengers to not depart baggage unattended and gate brokers’ reminders about restricted carry-on bag house.
And as he and Huang carry out the items they’ve ready with virtuosic aptitude, some passengers hurry by with out seeming to note the free live performance.
But Draiblate is unfazed. He is aware of that is an airport, not a live performance corridor. And he hopes even the passengers who’re too busy to cease will see {that a} pilot is performing.
For the ultimate quantity of their practically 30-minute present, the 2 violinists play a rousing rendition of John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” in honor of America’s 250th birthday.
Somewhat boy dances along with his dad. A pair sits down in seats close to the stage and holds arms. An older lady seems awestruck and arms off her suitcase to her husband so she will be able to report the scene on her telephone.
“Thank you so much,” Draiblate says as onlookers cheer on the finish of the piece. “We’ll do this again another time.”
Within minutes, Huang is heading to a close-by gate to board his flight to Switzerland, the place he’ll be performing in a chamber music competition.
And Draiblate is again within the driver’s seat of his BMW convertible, which has a license plate that reads “BOW2FLY.”
As he drives south on I-95 towards his Maryland residence, he thinks about future concert events he hopes to plan.
He’d love extra possibilities to deliver his two careers collectively. He’s wanting ahead to telling different musicians concerning the airport’s stage — and performing there once more between flights.