Remember when flight tickets were written by hand on carbon copy paper, one sheet per flight? Most calculations were also done manually, with the help of huge IATA books.

In the late 1990s, during my third year at university, I had to face the dreaded 'mini cleaver' Stoyan Alexandrov (Minister of Finance in Lyuben Berov's government; I also had exams with the ex-Prime Minister Prof. Berov himself). It was around this time that I decided to attend the training for IATA tariffs provided by Balkan, the Bulgarian flag carrier. I thought a half-day commitment would be manageable alongside university.

The lecturer and examiner from BGA Balkan was an icon in the industry, been doing it for decades. Her name was Vania (Nedeltcheva, if I remember correctly, or Nikolova). We had two exams during the course, one in the middle and another at the end. To everyone's surprise, I achieved 100% on the first exam, becoming her first student ever to do so. She was almost shocked.

I mistakenly concluded that selling flight tickets and calculating complex multi-carrier, multi-city itineraries by hand was easy. I struggled on the second exam but managed to pass. The rest is history;)