CDU boss and hobby pilot Friedrich Merz (66) dreamed of flying himself early on. “Flying has always been the dream of my youth. When you push through the cloud cover, see the blue sky and the engines run peacefully – that’s a great pleasure for me,” Merz said in an interview with “Bunte” magazine.
He used to not be able to afford the pilot’s license – so he promised his worried wife that he would only get his pilot’s license when the children were out of the house. “So it wasn’t until I was 53 that I was able to fulfill that dream.” The fact that his wife Charlotte now also likes to fly with him is “really the icing on the cake” for his joy in flying.
At the beginning of July, the CDU leader flew to Sylt with his wife Charlotte on a private plane to the wedding of Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner. The flight had triggered a lot of criticism that Merz was sending the wrong signal in times of climate change and global warming.
