This week, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands told a local Dutch paper, Telegraaf, that for the past 20 years, he has been working as a co-pilot for KLM Airline – even after he acceded to the throne in 2013.

“I find flying simply fantastic,” he told the newspaper, according to a BBC translation. “You can’t take your problems with you off the ground. You can completely switch off for a while and focus on something else.”

He said that even in airports, he was rarely identified as the king, and is currently being retrained to fly the Boeing 737.