(CNN) — It’s 5:43 a.m., and the runways at Reagan National Airport are already roaring with activity.
Plane engines thunder. Trucks beep as they back up. A shearing sound echoes in the distance.
But First Officer Netanel Draiblate has no problem tuning out the noise. He’s laser-focused on the task at hand: making sure the Chicago-bound 737 he’s about to fly is ready for its 6:30 a.m. takeoff.
The pilot shines the bright beam of a flashlight as he walks around the tarmac and inspects the aircraft. Then he heads inside to begin a rapid-fire series of tests. A click-click-click as he flips switch after switch on the control panel punctuates the steady hum of the plane’s power system.
“This,” Draiblate says, “is almost like warming up for a concert.”
He knows that routine, too. Draiblate is also a professional violinist, and the process of tuning and mentally preparing for a performance is just as familiar to him as the precise pre-flight procedures for a commercial jet.
He’s often on stage when he’s not in the cockpit. The 43-year-old studied music for decades before he took his first flying lesson. And now he’s a United Airlines pilot — and heading into his 17th season as the concertmaster of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra.
These two elite jobs, piloting passenger jets and helping lead an orchestra as its top musician, may sound like they have little in common. But Draiblate says they share some striking similarities. And at a time when more Americans are taking on second jobs and forging career paths that don’t fit into a traditional box, this pilot and violinist says he’s happy he’s found a new sense of balance in his life.
On this July morning, his violin is tucked away in storage at the back of the cockpit as he discusses the flight plan with the plane’s captain. Over the next few days, he’ll fly to five cities in four states and practice music for hours inside hotel rooms across the country.
A concert is quickly approaching. For the first time, he’ll be playing in an unlikely location that blends both his careers.
An idea begins with a chance meeting in an airport security line
Draiblate was at Newark Liberty International Airport a few months ago when someone caught his attention: another musician, also toting a violin as he went through the TSA security line.
Paul Huang, an acclaimed New York-based violinist who frequently plays with orchestras and other ensembles around the world, was on his way to perform at a music festival in Japan.
The two violinists had never met before but discovered they had many friends in common. And a professor who’d taught Draiblate had also been one of Huang’s mentors.
“OK,” Huang thought to himself, “this guy is serious.”
Draiblate had an idea. “Hey, I want to show you something,” he said. He took Huang to see a small stage in a waiting area of Terminal C. “Next time you’re at the airport, let me know,” he said, “and maybe you and I can play something.”
Huang had never played in an airport before. But he’d once performed the National Anthem at an NFL game, and he’d seen how powerful it can be to play classical music in an unexpected venue. That week he sent Draiblate his schedule, and the two began planning their performance.
“I was just elated with the idea that he’s so passionate about this,” Huang says.
As a child, he slept beside his violin
For Draiblate, who’s known to fans of the Annapolis Symphony by his nickname, Nati, playing violin has been a lifelong passion.
He grew up in Israel with parents who were both professional violinists, and at 5 years old he remembers begging to start lessons. His mom, who also taught violin, insisted he wait another year until he was more disciplined. But she struck a deal with her son.
Every night, she’d make space in his bed and place the violin case beside him.
“I would refuse to go to sleep if it wasn’t there,” Draiblate recalls.
At 6, she gave him his first lesson, and his love for the violin only grew from there. As his training intensified, his passion for performance eventually brought him to the United States, where he studied at the Chicago College of Performing Arts and the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University before going on to earn a doctorate at the University of Maryland. In 2010, he landed a job as concertmaster of the Annapolis Symphony.
Draiblate’s skills and leadership ability were immediately clear, according to José-Luis Novo, the symphony’s conductor and artistic 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 commitment to the music also make him a standout performer, Novo says. “I’ve never seen him playing halfway.”
Like many musicians, Draiblate found himself juggling numerous gigs. He was the top violinist in multiple orchestras around the country, teaching and leading the symphony’s music academy.
But he wasn’t looking to add another career to the mix — until he got an unexpected piece of advice.
A former fighter pilot suggests a new path
Frank Kennedy was impressed. The director and chief flight instructor at the Navy Annapolis Flight Center is a former 747 captain and an ex-fighter pilot, and he’s seen plenty of people at the controls of a plane.
When he flew with Draiblate, he saw potential. The same skills that made him a strong leader onstage made him a highly 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 loved planes almost as long as he’d loved the violin. He’d doodle them frequently as a kid and collected models of aircraft he flew in on family trips. But it wasn’t until 2018 that a friend gave him his first flying lesson.
“I got hooked,” Draiblate recalls. The years he’d spent training as a violinist made the studying and memorization skills needed to become a pilot come naturally. But at the time, he kept signing up for more lessons as a hobby, hoping maybe someday to own a four-seat Cessna he could fly with friends on the weekends.
His ambitions started to shift after a flight exam in 2019, when he met Kennedy for the first time. Draiblate remembers Kennedy asking what he did for a living, 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 much he loved flying, but he pointed out how many musical commitments were on his plate. Kennedy helped him see an alternative he’d never considered. He could focus his music career on performing in the symphony, leading its academy and performing several times a year with a DC-based chamber orchestra. And if he set aside several of his other music gigs, he could also pursue a career as a pilot.
Eventually, Draiblate made that pitch to the symphony’s board.
Novo says he was quickly convinced.
“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.
The pilot has performed for passengers before
With the symphony’s blessing, Draiblate began working as a commercial airline pilot in November 2022. And he’s been a first officer for United since April 2025. He estimates he flies around 18 days per month, often taking last-minute assignments as a junior pilot on reserve duty.
Draiblate frequently travels with his violin so he can practice between concerts. It’s common for pilots to have other talents outside their aviation work, Draiblate says, and he’s come across a few other pilot-musicians online.
Still, he’s become familiar with the shocked expressions that flash across passengers’ faces when they see him perform while wearing his pilot’s uniform.
He saw those surprised faces amid the winter holidays in December, when he played at the Denver airport with another United pilot, a captain who’s also a pianist.
And he saw them again during a flight delay in Newark last year, when he gave an impromptu onboard performance while waiting for the all-clear to fly.
He knew many on the Punta Cana-bound flight were stressed by the delay and eager to get to the beach. So he gave them something he hoped would transport them somewhere else in the meantime: Bach.
The first officer stood at the front of the 737’s cabin and played the serene, sweet notes of a sonata.
Passengers pulled out their phones to record the surprise solo. A little boy climbed onto his dad’s lap to get a better view. And when Draiblate played the last note, row after row erupted in applause, and a woman in first class shouted, “Bravo!”
Draiblate smiled, took a brief bow and got ready for takeoff.
His second career gives him a new perspective onstage
Being a pilot has come in handy during his career as a violinist, too.
He once flew a soloist who’d just performed with the orchestra to Washington Dulles International Airport, avoiding the DC area’s notorious highway traffic.
Novo, the Annapolis Symphony conductor, says he’s noticed that Draiblate’s career as a pilot has made him even more organized and efficient when planning events and discussing orchestra business.
“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 different 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.”
A last-minute rehearsal
If Draiblate is harboring any jitters, there’s no sign of them as he heads through the Newark airport security line on the way to meet Huang, violin in tow.
They’re about to play together for the first time. And they have less than an hour to iron out any kinks before their concert on the airport’s stage.
In a United conference room tucked away from the commotion of the terminal, the musicians get out their instruments and are harmonizing a few seconds later.
“Amazing!” Huang says as they run through a duet by Italian composer Giovanni Battista Viotti. After a few quick adjustments, the two are in sync.
Draiblate smiles. Just as he’s learned to respond swiftly to flight conditions as a pilot, as a performer, he’s learned to listen 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 idea of balance makes sense.
“It’s good to have two things,” he says. “It actually makes you happier on both.”
Draiblate has flown more than 60 flights in and out of Newark for United. But he’s never performed on the airport’s stage. Today he’s wearing his pilot’s uniform, even though he doesn’t have a flight scheduled. He’s excited to have a chance to show others the two 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 walk into the concourse. In the roughly 18 months since United set up its stage in the Newark terminal, the vice president of airport operations has seen passengers and staff members light up during performances, from youth poetry readings to jazz ensembles to an employee talent show.
Gooda knows the 15,000 United employees in the Newark area have countless skills they bring to the table. And he’s excited for passengers today to see another side of one of the airline’s more than 19,000 pilots.
It’s a bustling afternoon in one of the country’s busiest airports and a steady stream of people are rushing through the concourse. The high-top tables in the waiting area near the stage are starting to fill up with passengers cramming in quick meals and neon-vest-clad workers on break. The air is full of the sounds of hundreds of conversations, the crackling of potato chip bags and the beeping horns of trams that race by with passengers who are running late.
A small crowd gathers as the violinists play their first duet. Draiblate greets them with a warm 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 toward planes visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind the stage. It’s a beautiful backdrop.
But the airport’s acoustics during rush hour on a Monday afternoon are less ideal.
As Draiblate speaks, it isn’t long before he’s drowned out by blaring announcements warning passengers not to leave luggage unattended and gate agents’ reminders about limited carry-on bag space.
And as he and Huang perform the pieces they’ve prepared with virtuosic flair, some passengers hurry by without seeming to notice the free concert.
But Draiblate is unfazed. He knows this is an airport, not a concert hall. And he hopes even the passengers who are too busy to stop will see that a pilot is performing.
For the final number in their nearly 30-minute show, the two violinists play a rousing rendition of John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” in honor of America’s 250th birthday.
A little boy dances with his dad. A couple sits down in seats near the stage and holds hands. An older woman looks awestruck and hands off her suitcase to her husband so she can record the scene on her phone.
“Thank you so much,” Draiblate says as onlookers cheer at the end of the piece. “We’ll do this again another time.”
Within minutes, Huang is heading to a nearby gate to board his flight to Switzerland, where he’ll be performing in a chamber music festival.
And Draiblate is back in the driver’s seat of his BMW convertible, which has a license plate that reads “BOW2FLY.”
As he drives south on I-95 toward his Maryland home, he thinks about future concerts he hopes to plan.
He’d love more chances to bring his two careers together. He’s looking forward to telling other musicians about the airport’s stage — and performing there again between flights.
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