As son of a well-known Royal Dutch Navy pilot Ruud started his aviation career in the germ at home. His first position in aviation was one in the Royal Dutch Air Force in 1979 as a helicopter engineer, which he left in 1986 to work for a private company.
Meanwhile he started the foundation of the Dutch Spitfire Flight with three other aviation minded persons. This foundation bought and restored the Spitfire MK 732, which is currently still flying in The Netherlands.
In 1993 Ruud bought two Bell 204’s in Spain together with a Schreiner colleague, sold one to the USA and restored the other one to flying condition. This restored Bell with registration N 98049 flew several years from Naval Air Station De Kooy as ex-MLD AB 204 B “220”, attending the Air show circuit ending up in Chile as fire fighting helicopter, for which purpose it is still used. However, it is painted in ‘fire red’ and lost its navy colors.

After seven years flying off shore for Schreiner, Ruud joined the Royal Dutch Air force as a Search and Rescue commander on the Agusta Bell 412 from Leeuwarden. In 2000 he left the Air force and had a flying position as a Learjet A 36 pilot and L-39’s captain. Both aircraft were operated in a target tow company, for training purposes of Navy crews on Navy vessels. In this firm he was shortly involved in the setup of a Dutch Hawker Hunter, which the company did not succeed because of difficulties in law permissions of operating these aircraft free in Dutch air space.
Ruud left the target tow company in September 2004 and started flying helicopters again in Qatar, soon dispatched in Iran as Base Manager and in 2005 he joined Canadian Helicopters Global (CHC) division, for which he has been flying in Nigeria till 2005. Then he set up a new helicopter base for CHC in Kazakhstan, where 70 people work in shifts now keeping six helicopters flying offshore to rigs in the Caspian Sea. Both four AW139 and the two Dauphin 365N helicopters are being operated there daily.