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Mike Allsop is a commercial airline pilot, adventurer and speaker based in Auckland, New Zealand.

His climbing career has spanned six continents over 12 years with climbs including Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa and Alpamayo in the Peruvian Andes.

In 2007 Mike took on the ultimate mountaineer’s challenge: Mt Everest. He succeeded in becoming one of just a small number of New Zealand adventurers to reach the summit of the world’s highest mountain unguided.

An international flying career with Air New Zealand has taken Mike around the world many times and he is currently a 737 Captain flying within New Zealand shores.

Mike regularly talks to schools as part of his “giving back” philosophy and is an inspirational and motivating keynote speaker.

He speaks from the heart when he tells his audiences about the power of goal-setting to make just about anything possible. As a young boy from a low-income, single-parent home, Mike’s dream of getting his commercial pilot’s licence and becoming an Air New Zealand captain seemed impossible.  Later, in his twenties 

he set an even loftier goal of climbing the world’s highest mountain. Mike learned that through hard work and breaking down 

his goals he could not just reach his dreams but have unexpected and unforgettable adventures along the way.

Mike is married to Wendy and their three children Ethan, Maya and Dylan are already keen to follow in their father’s adventurous footsteps. Mike recently took his eldest son Ethan on a trip to Nepal to trek up the Khumbu valley and see Mt Everest for the first time (click here to read Ethan’s story). He plans to take each of his children when they reach seven years of age.

Each year Mike runs adventure tours to Everest base camp for Air New Zealand staff and he’s currently planning his next big adventure: a journey to the North Pole.

There he’ll face a whole new raft of challenges – from polar bears to pack ice, extreme cold and arctic storms – plus plenty of unknowns.

One thing’s for sure: he won’t be sitting back on his couch wondering: “what if?”