The things we love define us, at least as much, if not moreso, than those things we hate. People love each other, they love their children, dogs, cats, food, music, a good book by the fire on a cool winter’s evening.
Pilots – real pilots – love flying.
That kind of love is a difficult thing to express, God knows that I have tried. There is a sense of liberation to it, a tautly controlled freedom that exists within rational constraints of time, fuel, altitude, airspeed. Weather. A sense of master of complex concepts, machinery, rules and regulations. There is a bundledness of flying, a beginning, middle and end to pre-flight preparation, execution, the plane tied down at the destination. Everything complete except for the payment.
Some people see a hawk circling in the sky and see nothing but a bird, they turn their eyes down to the ground to which they are affixed and rooted. Some see the hawk and feel envy. Pilots see the hawk and feel kinship mixed with admiration.
A military aviator grows accustomed in time to understand that death is always flying wing. The aircraft are complex, the missions demanding, and that’s before people start shooting at you, or the manifold dependencies of launching and recovering from aircraft carriers at sea are factored in. In every optimist there is the belief that it “can’t happen to me,” but eventually sufficient optimists in the ranks die to cure us of that notion. Fate is random, you do what you can to stay inside your box, but each of us knows that in any complex system combinations arise that are neither foreseeable nor evitable, although the vast majority of aviation mishaps are neither. So you try your best to keep the odds on your side, and keep going because you must. Because you love it.
And those things we love we tend to share with the people we love, knowing as we do that words cannot express the realness of a thing, that they are tokens, ciphers, signifiers. The gap between what we feel and what we can express is enormous even for the rare few gifted in the use of language. Sometimes a thing must be demonstrated. Sometimes we fabricate reasons to do so, conventions of utilitarian convenience or necessity.
I took my sister and brother-in-law flying yesterday afternoon in a rented Cessna 172. Flew down to San Diego Bay, then up the coast nearly to Carlsbad, seeing from the air what they had seen from the ground the previous day. My sister asked me if the Hobbit often flies with me, and I answered that she had not. That while the kids were still at home, we were reluctant to expose them to a risk of being orphaned, no matter how slender. She laughed and said, “Like our daughter would be if we crashed today?”
Yeah. Like that.
It was a lovely flight.
Horrible things happen every day on the nation’s highways. Entire families snuffed out in a moment’s inattention or some other vagary of fate. And yet we drive, because we have places to go and we try not to dwell on it because you can’t go through life frightened. It’s a little different when you fly with family.
The odds are that no one else is qualified to help you much. No one else prepared to intervene in a moment of questionable judgment. A non-flying family member places a breathtakingly innocent amount of trust in the family pilot, thinking perhaps that anyone with thousands of hours of flight time, combat experience, hundreds of landings and catapult launches is somehow immunized from fate or error. Which the pilot knows, or should, is the furthest thing from the truth. The burden he bears is enormous, and it cannot be shared.
Every time we break ground we tempt fate, and fate can be very, very patient.
“When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” — Leonardo da Vinci
I often think about such things, especially when I am trying NOT to think about such things.
Like others here, I have lost acquaintances in this business. Two wonderful, great friends, and some others I was privileged to know. I think of them and wonder why did I not go where they have gone. Why did I survive?
It’s easy to assume that I survived because there is still some task I must perform, but I don’t accept that. I do know that as long as I live, and I remember, that they shall not be really gone.
And yet sometimes I miss them so very very much. And I feel that guilt at being left behind.
I miss the flying. I miss the feeling of usefulness, and of the close bond between aircrew. I miss not being tied to a routine.
Still and all, I am happy to have children to take care, to teach, and love and prepare for a future. I am very happy to have all that.
But still I miss my friends, and feel guilt for having what they could never have. It makes it all so much more precious, and more important to get it right.
God bless them all.
Didn’t Ernest K. Gann capture it with the title of his book “Fate Is The Hunter.”
Richard Bach gave it a pretty good effort in his “Stranger to the Ground”, too.
Lex:
The Doctor and I agreed to the same policy when SNO and SNT were younger: No orphans. We have bent that rule but rarely; either we all fly or we go via two methods.
Since we mortgaged our future and bought the Cirrus, the pucker factor has reduced, but with a sharp eye out for the fact that Cirrus fly XC a ton and there are a bunch of fatal mishaps to prove it. She relies on the fact that I loved my GRU-7B handle greatly and won’t hesitate to pull the Cirrus’ red one if I have to.
Fly safe and remember, all they have to do is look at your face to know why you do this.
VR,
Comjam
Since I often fly with one or both of my young sons on overpriced hamburger expeditions, I think about this topic a lot. My wife and I have decided that the benefits of doing so outweigh the risks, although having my sons along has made me much more focused on safety of flight issues than I ever was when I was flying as a single man. I used to be fairly fatalistic about the possibility of a midair, but now my traffic scan is sufficient to leave me with a sore neck after every flight. I usually tell people who inquire about it that my sons and I are in greater danger driving to the airport than we are when we get there, and I believe that, but the onus is definitely on me to make sure we all have a good day. Which is how it should be, in the end.
One who has been bitten by the flying bug can never explain it to the “groundhogs.”
The main ghost haunting general aviation is the lack of risk management. The true pilot knows death always flys wing, and is waiting patiently to collect his next victory. The “groundhog” that manages to get wings never accepts his/her responsibility to minimize the risk of flying. Even the true pilot occasionally has a lapse of attention and death wins another round.
Flying is about two things, energy management, and risk management. A lapse in either area leads to tying the minimum altitude record. Luck has little to do with winning the battle. You either give yourself wiggle room in case something bad happens, or you lose the contest. In the end, the pilot has no one to blame but himself.
QM, I would have thought that the main ghost haunting GA is litigation.
IMO, sometimes there is no blame -wrong place, wrong time, or “stuff” happens”. Luck/fate may have little to do with winning the battle, but it is involved.
Re Marine6’s reference to FITH. My first vivid, and still remarkable, memories of reading about flying are from that book by Mr. Gann.
Regards,
Ron/Marine6 – Back in my younger days, I had the unique honor of hearing EKG speak at several squadron dining in’s. He lived on one of the San Juan islands near Whidbey and was as good a speaker as he was a writer.
This…is a GREAT post. You nailed it…and I’m not a pilot, but I truly understand. I really do. I really really do.
May “Meat” and his daughters RIP. I mean that from my soul.
I think the nightmare is not so much the chance of taking your family with you to an untimely end – as you say you face that every time the family gets in the car together. I think it’s that it happens when you’re sharing something you love with someone you love.
Before my husband went in to the military to fly, he flew aerobatics (pitts, and a cristen eagle…his father built planes and had a hangar). Got his pilot’s license at 18. We used to go out in college and he’d take me on dates that way…fly from Gainesville, Florida, to St Augustine for fun. It was cool, “my guy, the pilot”. I even went up in the pitts with him and loved it!
Anyway, mortality kicked in. Several of our friends have since died in those little planes…most of them were jet pilots in the airforce. I’ve read it’s among the top causes of deaths for fighter pilots because they are accustomed to the power of one plane, and can’t adjust to another, or something like that.
Anyway, my husband was raised around planes and his father used to take him up since the time he was old enough to see out the window. I won’t let him take our boys flying in them, and he hasn’t stepped in one for years. My dad was a fighter pilot, too…he flew everything from the P40 to the F100. When it was just my dad, I had a fatalistic, well, what’s meant to be will by type of attitude. No more. I really have hopes that my kids won’t take to flying at all.
Liz/
You’re right about the light aircraft thing and fighter pilots. Almost 40 yrs ago when I was on active duty it was very much a matter of command concern even then. Don’t know what the stats are today, but back then light ac crashes were the biggest cause of death among active duty AF pilots while on leave–exceeding auto deaths by a wide margin.
Liz, if you’ll permit be to be so bold, do you hope your kids won’t take to flying at all because of the selfish wish to keep them with you longer, or because of the selfless wish to protect them?
It’s a fine line, as a parent, between protecting and letting them experience the risks and pitfalls to be found in life, and letting them go to learn on their own. An even harder decision to make as a parent when there is risk of injury to the child.
Being the one responsible for them while risky things are done, that’s another thing as well. We do that every time we drive the soccer team to practice or whip up some deviled eggs for church pot-luck. Those are just more familiar, not always less deadly tasks. One might decide against football in favor of soccer, where no contact is supposed to happen. Safer sport, soccer, until one also understands there’s no padding and no spine protection and wasn’t it Gordon Banks who as a goal-keeper had broken every bone in each hand as a pro?
One of my fondest memories was riding the motorcycle with Dad, perched on the gas tank with his legs and arms on the controls mostly keeping me from falling off, riding into town for parts or herding cattle back into the yards for to cut out and wean and such. Similar memories on a horse, sitting on the animal’s neck. No helmets in those days, it’s just how we did things.
Mom hoped I’d never grow up to be a farmer. Considered it too risky from both a financial and a health perspective. Her emphysema (though she’s never smoked) she blames on the hog dust and corn dust and such.
Dad didn’t live to develop those long-term health risks. Cancer got him before I entered high school, cause and reason unknown.
I moved back to the farm after college and the job as an engineer, thought it a better place to raise a family than a city, a better place to teach responsibility and accepting one’s fate and that whole bootstrap thing to the kid.
My gosh how I want to protect her, how I want to intervene every time she starts to fall. And how hard it is to restrain myself so she can learn the lesson herself, rise above that setback, and choose her own course in the future.
If history is any guide, I won’t be here to cover for her very much longer. I do so hope she has the memories of our time together on the motorcycle, on the tractor, in the living room climbing on the furniture, and charts her own course with a healthy awareness of risk, and a self-sufficient willingness to accept and look beyond it.
I’d ask my wife for her input here, but I’m sure she’d disagree.
– Max
One of my brilliant senior thesis students who just graduated was the daughter of a naval pilot who turned to flying small private jets after he retired from the service. She was six or seven years old when his plane crashed a few miles from their home–saw the fire trucks but didn’t understand what it meant for her til she got home.
Now she spends every day still trying to figure out what it means for her…maybe she’s the kind of kid who life would have been difficult for one way or another…never can tell. She’s brilliant and damaged. Very damaged. There was a great emptiness for her last Friday when she graduated.
And she hates flying…probably as much as her dad loved it.
That’s what breaks my heart about the crash of the father with his daughters more than anything else–that he left other daughters behind. It also tears at me every time I see that a fallen service member has children that are old enough to remember him (I lost my father at age 11 and the older I get, the more I understand its depth of impact). Those girls have a rough road ahead of them; I hope they have a good alternate father figure in their lives right now.
Lauri? If I might be so bold, this student of yours needs a father figure, a mentor, perhaps even an example to draw from.
You could be that mentor.
If she hates flying as much as her Dad loved it, she needs to experience why Dad loved it so and understand it had nothing to do with her and had everything to do with who Dad was.
Perhaps she can do that by meeting others who are in the same boat. Perhaps she can do that by reading the works of others who were there with her father. I’m thinking that introducing her to the kids of folks in high-risk jobs, and the co-workers of her father, might be beneficial
For one, she’ll see she’s not alone, that many kids have parents who do risky things and sometimes it catches up with them. For the second, she’ll realize it’s not because of her that this happened.
I’m no psychologist, all I know is this Memorial Day there’s a lot of parents who aren’t coming back, and a lot of friends who helped with those kids left behind.
Up until the early 70’s that seemed to work as a social support group.
– Max
As a pilot who has been flying General Aviation for 36 years and is in the 121 cargo airline business in a non-flying job, I have accumulated a very healthy respect for the risks every time the preparations for a flight come together and result in either me or my business associates taking the runway.
The preplanning process for me is much the same whether I am in the left seat of the Cessna rental from HWO or I am selling a 45 ton load from YIP to OAIX.
We have a motto that drives our business planning: Fly Safe, Fly On-Time and On-Budget. These rules apply for both GA and 121 long haul operations.
As the airline manager responsible for revenue, I prepare the estimates on ACMI (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance, Insurance) cost for the route, fuel burn, landing, loading, overflight, navigation, parking, crew transport, housing, and a whole list of other events relating to the route including runway analysis, atlernates, weather, weight & balance, hazmat loading, diplmatic clearances, safe divert enroute, security and of course profit and loss.
The number of people that count on me to get it right include the entire workforce. No revenue = no jobs. On a scheduled flight (38 hours round trip from the U.S. to the Middle East and back) this week we are still short of breakeven revenue by $50K. I am trying to find a load from Europe to the U.S. and still not sure where we will stop for fuel before a transatlantic crossing. Fuel burn in the airplane is about 1800 usg/block hour. The airplane can carry about 123,000 lbs of fuel. So far we only have 10,000 lbs of cargo. I need another 75,000 lbs prior to Tuesday’s departure from the Middle East back to the states.
Bottom line, I ride on the flights to some of the world’s sh@tholes. In Africa last year we had airport ground staff board the airplane during the unloading of 30 tons of oil drilling equipment with automatic weapons drawn…very menacing. Not only did they want to get paid in cash, they wanted all of our catering and toilet paper……seems life in that corner of the world was not so fun. No shots were fired. Nobody was hurt in the air or on the ground. Captain paid the bandits $10,000 in cash, wrote a check for $4000 and let them clean out our supply of TP, Cokes and waters. A good decision. P.S. the check never cleared. Seems banks in that country do not recognize checks as a form of payment.
Lex got it right, “The odds are that no one else is qualified to help you much. No one else prepared to intervene in a moment of questionable judgment.”
Acknowledge the risks and the heartbreaks addressed by our host and the fine folks above who have added to this thread. Interestingly, my thoughts went to this topic today in a few moments of solitude. I can’t speak for everyone else here but flying, even the humblest bugsmasher, never disappoints. Ever. When the mains break the ground, I am 17 again. It is the only thing in life I have found to be so.
Dust, I’ve taken flying lessons on small planes three times over the decades.
Wanted to learn how to be a pilot and fly planes. Every time I was very uncomfortable, and the adrenaline was pumping, though not in the good sense. I do not understand why I was affected so, but I was.
As making mistakes while flying often has non-trivial results, and trying to force myself to learn the mechanics and get a pilots license did not seem an especially smart thing to do, I accepted that whatever indefinable quality makes one able to be a pilot was a quality I did not possess.
Some people cannot ride a motorcycle, or hike off into the woods or mountains for a week or so with only what you carry on your back, or whitewater kayak, or skydive; those activities I can do. Fly a plane? Apparently not so much.
From a groundhog, my hat is off to all good pilots, and the ones that rise to world class status, well, you truly are gifted and have special talents.
Ron Snyder/
It’s more a mental/conceptual thing, rather than something like hand-eye coordination, etc. Years ago my Father, who was both Head Tennis and Basketball Coach at a college in the mid-west, demanded that his BB players all enroll in his Spring PE tennis class to test the transferability of skills, etc., as both sports put a premium on foot-work nimbleness and hand-eye coordination.
What he found was there seemed to be no correlation. Some of his best BB players were the worst at tennis, while some of the bench warmers excelled at tennis. (Of course for some the reverse was true also) It seemed, rather, to center on the mental concept (the “sight-picture” in flying parlance) of “striking” the ball–as opposed to “pushing” it. Those that “got it” progressed; those that didn’t, were lost causes. And seemingly had nothing to do whatsoever with either intelligence or physical skills.
Dust, you’re not alone there. Not even if the bugs are getting a near-even break.
I despair of ever being able to put it into words that a non-flyer can understand.
Lex, I was wondering if we’d soon see a post like this. Thanks for trying to explain it to us earthbound folks.
Ron,
My hat’s off to you for trying. Perhaps you may get a chance to fly with a friend by riding in the right seat and just take it in without experiencing the pressure. Also you can learn the mechanics virtually in something like Microsofts Flight Sim X. Maybe that can help. It helps with procedures and working your check lists.
Thanks for the compliment but most of theses other folks are the real aviators. I’m just a hack. But I try to be a safe hack by understanding what my own personal envelope is and staying in it. Best of luck!
Flight Sim is a pretty good softwre package. I read about one guy, in Flying magazine, who had a hard time with cross wind landings and worked on the problem in Flight Sim until he got it down. Never had problems again in the real world.
It’s a nice game too. It’s the only way you can fly to Meigs Field since the chief terrorist of Chicago closed it.
What is it with pilots and Meigs Field, anyway? My brother keeps insisting that that is where I must start each and every flight when he is around. I think the only way I will ever get to take off from any other airport is to fly there first from Meigs. And since I can’t do any mid-air refueling… I just don’t get it.
Meigs not available in FSX AFAIK. It was my only airfield until FSX Accelerator because it mimicked an aircraft carrier so to speak. Sad that it is no more. Now NAS Nowra with some Google Earth scenery is my favourite where I’m testing (but not building) an RNZAF A4K KAHU Skyhawk. It will be good – I’ll let youse know when the cheapware becomes available. There is a possibility that HMAS Melbourne will become available in FSX Accelerator also. The Hornet in Accelerator is marvellous. There is a freeware Goshawk T-45C available which is excellent. Good AoA indexer to use but like the Hornet requires the hook to be down to stop the indexer from blinking (a sad oversight). Go here to get info about it and a freeware Tomcat in development: http://indiafoxtecho.blogspot.com/
Every time we break ground we tempt fate, and fate can be very, very patient.
But fate is just that – fate. The destiny of each one of us is that we will eventually leave this earth. Some of us sooner than others. You and I (and many others here, I would assume) have the faith that there is a better world on the other side. And, while tragic for those of us left behind, it is not tragic for those that leave.
I am a firm believer in that when it is your time, it is your time and it doesn’t matter if you’re sitting cross-legged in the middle of your living room or jumping out of an airplane at 15K feet or knocking down a door of a drug dealer’s house as part of a SWAT team.
In the meantime, live life. Share the things you love with those you love and live every moment. It sounds cliche, and it is, but it’s also some of the best advice I’ve ever received and so very, very true. None of us truly know when our time will come. Live accordingly.
To each their own, respectfully disagree, but no challenge to the logic. Perhaps a spouse who was an orphan plays to a differing view.
I am, however, coming to the conclusion that SEL is best left to Day VFR in relatively flat areas, Cirrus excepted.
Anymouse, you don’t happen to work for the FAA do you?
No, I fight with them, not for them. Did I sound too much like a freedom grabber in my post?
Husband was a P-3 pilot and a T-28 instructor at the time, and he had taken enough lessons to fly a little single engine plane at the local airport in Corpus Christi. He was so excited and wanted to take my Dad flying with him, who was a jet-jock when I was born and hadn’t flown since. Dad refused with a thanks-but-no-thanks. I REALLY didn’t want to go with him, but I did, and left the kids to watch from the ground with my folks. Once we were airborne, I said, “OK — now let’s go down.” He insisted we sightsee a little, but I kept saying that I’d had enough. I wouldn’t let the kids go up with him either. Partly I was so concerned because I didn’t think the plane was sound — irrational, I know, but there you go. The other part was the fact that our children could watch us crash and die in front of them and I REALLY didn’t want that.
I know my Husband was a good pilot and flew long hours and even taught others how to fly, but I just couldn’t believe that he could really do it — really fly. I know I was freaking out too much and felt badly for doubting his abilities — ones he’d worked so hard to learn and master — but I just couldn’t help it. Small planes scare me to death still.
I feel for those who don’t come home, whether from fate or from inaction or whatever, from the cropdusters who snag a powerline, to sightseers, to cargo, to military. Flying’s a risky business and risky for those left behind. I’ve been on that end as well with the worrying and fear when a plane goes down and before the squadron is announced. Sucks. Big time.
Any, Yeah you did!
Grade A Buzz Killer!
Just returned from the best flight I ever took. Over Sedona and to the Grand Canyon and back. I packed the whole family in a rented Stationair. I couldn’t have been more thrilled. While my family liked the sightseeing they still didn’t quite understand the goofy grin on Dad/ Husband. They don’t quite get my love of aviation, but they do recognize that it’s hard wired.
I not only saw one of the great wonders of the world from the air, but was able to share it with those closest to me. Hard to explain but it was one of those bucket list type things.
Flying in the flat lands of Illinois will never be the same.
Wilko/
Go down to Southern Ill–they’ve got PLENTY of mountains, erm, large, erm, small hills and valleys to do some “contour flying”–as long as you don’t run into any AMAX coal conveyor towers.
While we’re talking about risks, leaving widows and orphans behind and all that, I’d like to take the opportunity to note that what might seem risky isn’t always so to those who know what they’re doing.
Take those videos we’ve all seen of traps on the boat. Risky? Sure. But there’s good folks there in white shirts helping that pilot aboard, there’s a bunch more ready and able with the firefighting gear, the tractors, the chocks and chains, and more in the bowels of the ship making sure that cable will arrest properly.
What looks dangerous is so, but it can be a calculated danger, one with good odds in your favor.
It looks risky, and it is, but we’ve learned over the years how to make those risks the least they can be.
As a counter-point, I give this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57SXyEwPbI4
Full of fury and motion, things seem to happen too fast, and yet it’s a safer sport than Olympic ping-pong statistically.
I’m thinking the former carrier pilots view that and discover something they’d rather do than golf. For sound, fury, and g-forces it’s on par (there’s that golf joke again) with a cat shot.
Also costs about $35 million less for the ride.
Which, these days, that ain’t nothing.
– Max