Pilotage

My mother never revealed her exact age to us, except to report on her birthday every year that she was 29. On other days, when she was feeling good, she would invoke the cliché that "Life begins at 40" and have you believe it. Now that I'm a lot nearer my fiftieth birthday than my fortieth, I can appreciate the deliberate conflict between my mother's two minds. On the one hand, we can't help being frustrated by our inability to stop the aging clock. On the other, the years bring with them certain advantages and comforts unknown to younger, more impetuous types.

So it is with flying. We can't do a thing about the effects of the march of time on our piloting abilities. We can, however, appreciate what it does for our skills.

The years giveth, physiologically speaking — and then, doggone it, they taketh away. A child's body grows taller and stronger, more beautiful, and physically capable, up to a point. After that, it takes an increasingly larger maintenance commitment to improve strength and flexibility. The improvement period is followed by an attempt to preserve and, finally, a long struggle to slow the loss of physiological powers and abilities.

Most of us can do something about some of the physiological effects of aging. Proper diet and an exercise regimen keep the heart and lungs strong, preserve muscle tone, and hold extra weight at bay. We can take pills or pay for medical procedures to replace thinning hair, tighten sagging skin, and turbocharge a low-power libido.

Those physical manifestations of age have little to do with flying an airplane, however. I can only speak from a man's perspective, of course, and one aging process that has affected my flying is my sight. As with most men on the far side of 40, the lenses in my eyes are losing the elasticity of their youth. They can't adjust as well to changing focusing demands and changing light conditions. It's called presbyopia, and it's tough on a pilot. We basically use three different focuses to do our work: close in — about 12 inches — for reading charts; a bit longer than that — 20 to 24 inches — for scanning the instruments and gauges on the panel; and, finally, a distant focus for viewing everything outside the cockpit, from airport directional signs 100 feet away to converging traffic several miles away.

Also, like most men on the far side of 40, I spent several years in denial about the onset of presbyopia. Squinting and holding the charts farther away helped, but it became increasingly more difficult to read the small type on instrument approach procedure charts when flying at night. Given that IFR approaches in the clouds at night are one of the highest-risk activities a pilot flying alone can attempt, I swallowed my irrational and indefensible pride (the stuff that goeth before the accident) and bought myself a pair of glasses.

They're bifocals that gradually transition from a correction for farsightedness in the lower portion of the lenses, to no correction in the remaining lens area. They make a dramatic difference in my ability to comfortably read (I had to put them on just now to look up the spelling of presbyopia in the dictionary), especially in the cockpit.

So far I haven't noticed another widespread manifestation of years of experience in the cockpit of a piston-powered aircraft — hearing loss. I've been wearing a quality headset for 16 years, and no doubt that has saved my inner ear from permanent damage. The soft ear cups and sheepskin headband cover make wearing the head-set bearable. I also bite off that little button on the top of the baseball cap I wear when flying so that it won't dig into my head under the headset headband. (The buttons are such an issue that AOPA caps are ordered without them.)

My life as a general aviation pilot has been affected by other phenomena of aging, one physiological and the other mental. But unlike my changing vision, the impact on my flying has been subtle.

The first is stamina. I find that fatigue is more of an issue than in the past. I used to think nothing of flying into the night after a long day of meetings and interviews. Now I factor into my preflight planning the possibility of suffering from fatigue. Will the trip involve weather and a challenging approach? Am I tired now, or likely to become tired during the flight? Have I eaten a decent meal recently, and is that bottle of water aboard? I find that I'm much more likely to scrub a flight because of fatigue than I was in the past. That's a good thing.

The second, even more subtle manifestation of age on my flying is the ability to absorb new knowledge, especially technical knowledge. I marvel at the ease and eagerness with which my young son sops up information; old dog dad grumbles and frets about having to learn new tricks.

Learning comes naturally when you're young. As you age, it takes work. I'm thankful that I learned to fly when I was young, because I'd find it much more difficult now to devote the time and the brain power to the task. I admire people who learn to fly when they're older, because I know that it's not easy for them.

Aging isn't all bad, as my mother noted. In fact, there are some marvelous aspects to it. Chief among them is the byproduct of experience. Call it judgment, perspective, or wisdom; it adds a richness to the skills and knowledge that we acquire and develop as pilots. Pilots constantly make decisions that directly affect the safety of a flight. Can I take off at gross weight and climb out of the valley at this density altitude? Skill and knowledge determine whether we can or can't do that. Wisdom enables us to decide whether we should or shouldn't.

Finally, the years bring with them a deeper appreciation of the ability to fly. It seems to me that as people grow older, they are driven to seek substance in their lives, to find meaning in the things that they do, to make each day count for something. Flying contributes to the substance of my life. I'm convinced that as the years roll by, it'll count for even more.