Airplanes. Look at them, sitting out there on the ramp, straining gently against their ropes — you know how the sentimental opening goes.
There's Old Reliable in the usual tiedown spot, and next to it, that complex job you've been hoping to try. There's the old trainer sporting a new coat of paint, and alongside it, the FBO's newest arrival — rumor has it that the avionics in this bird are somethin' else. There's an empty spot on the line where a long-familiar machine, recently ferried to a new home, used to roost. m Some of these airplanes evoke fond memories — or memories, anyway. A few are total strangers; others, the neighbors you recognize by sight but have never gotten to know. If you fly some of this fleet, either as hired help or as a paying customer, they are part of the ambiance of the home field. It is hard to imagine the place without their physical presence or their call signs booming in your headset. Yet, deep in your heart you know that to the owners of the business, the rental birds you love are mere machines. Inanimate, insensible, some just back from revenue-producing flying, others recently out of the shop with expensive repairs — there isn't a one of them that the boss wouldn't sell in a heartbeat if the price was right. Pity.
While giving a first-time ride to a new aviation enthusiast last week, I was amazed to realize that I had been training students and giving first flights in that two-seater for almost nine years. This was a trusty little airplane that had endured thousands of hours of thumps and bumps — and some occasional dents — but still soldiered on, despite having spent most of its life in that rough-and-tumble flight category known euphemistically as "the training environment." The club that owns it wouldn't part with it for the world; a cascade of boos and hisses was poured down upon an errant member who proposed such a transaction a couple of years ago. The airplane stayed, but the member is gone.
Working in a cockpit gives one a special penchant for psychological attachments, or aversions, to particular aircraft. A quirky Cessna Skyhawk with the letters NR at the end of its call sign became known to the workforce as Nasty Rotten when, shortly after its arrival on to the scene, it began to reveal its less-refined characteristics. This nickname on occasion was amended to No Radios or Not Running, as circumstances required. Nasty Rotten was put in my charge for several months, and I must admit to growing rather fond of it after a skeptical introduction. Jealousy never plagued this romance because I had so little competition for NR's affections. It responded with ferocious, if sometimes overexuberant, loyalty.
Sometimes I was required to fly a tired little beast (we'll call it Foxtrot Juliet) on missions that I would have preferred to carry out in something a little less, well, anemic. The truth of it is that I'm rather big, and Foxtrot Juliet is rather small. Both of us are aging, but I'm doing so more gracefully, in my opinion. Foxtrot Juliet got a new paint job a year or so ago, but the bleach job will never hide the "leisurely" performance.
"Foxtrot Juliet!" I'd grumble whenever the assignment of the day required me to fly it. Go ahead and try it. Grumble "Fox Juliet" to yourself, while simultaneously rolling your eyes.
Speaking of airplanes' monikers, I used to rent a Cessna 172 with the asymmetrical call sign of N54759. This seemingly ordinary series of digits turned out to have remarkable qualities. Not once in the years that I flew it did an air traffic controller ever get the call sign right on his or her first response to a radio call. Typically, they responded: "54749," which admittedly, has greater symmetry. I took my instrument-rating checkride in 749?er, I mean, 759. Shortly thereafter, it was sold.
A sweet bird to one pilot is just a pile of junk to another. A trainer that I often flew as a student was disdainfully known to the other trainees at our flight school as The Garbage Scow. They preferred a fancier, more colorful airplane whose tail number ended in 270. I always found it amusing to listen in on the radio when pilots of 270 were being instructed to turn to the west: "Um, that's two-seven-zero for Two-Seven-Zero," they'd say in a confused tone. The Garbage Scow, by contrast, ended in 532, which could never be confused with a magnetic bearing.
All of us working stiffs where I later flew for hire developed feelings, generally favorable, toward the trio of airplanes that we would find on our flight schedules in no particular order of rotation. Although these craft all performed the same tasks in about the same way and even had the same pattern of N numbers consisting of three numbers followed by two letters, they were very much individuals. Hotel Echo was the smoothest of the lot. It seemed to go faster and climb better on the same power than the others, and it had the best of the radio stacks.
Yankee Sierra performed nicely, but it had a Spartan interior and occasionally quirky ground-handling — and once, when a passenger had a very bad day, the airplane was renamed Yucky Smell. The third member of this fleet was X-ray Mike, a name that always sounded to me like a complete sentence with its verb in the imperative form. I flew XM the least, so it remained more of an acquaintance than a friend.
Only a few of my old flames have come to grief, and none by my hand. Five-Three-Echo, a lovely IFR trainer and cross-country machine, met a truly Shakespearean end, incinerated on its tiedown spot when a poor preflight resulted in an attempted start-up with the carburetor removed. The scorch marks were visible on the ground all summer. Two-Zero-X-ray, a middle-size twin, hit a deer during a landing but emerged from the hangar with new engines and a new owner. Four-Four-Whiskey, of the same type, went down tragically in the wilderness when an engine quit with a heavy load aboard. Two-One-Nine recovered from flipping over in a strong wind, but a year or so later, it could not come back from mushing into the side of a ridge on a hot summer day.
But there have also been reunions. I had not seen Niner-Niner-Kilo (do you know how exhausting it is to say that on the radio all day?) since moving away from my former place of residence almost a decade before. Yet there it sat on our ramp, flown in by an owner who needed avionics work done. She said it had not been on leaseback for years. She smiled when I recalled names and faces from the old days on the line.
An old wreck I had once derided as an example of a sad-sack, neglected airplane not only was restored to flying condition, but, ironically, I became one of the first pilots to fly it regularly. Each time I buckled in, I offered a silent apology for all the smart comments I had made. Those quips had included certain snap judgments about the intelligence of people who would fly such a contraption.
My current favorite is an old war-horse deemed by a long-gone student as The Green Chicken. Five-Six-Five (the Chicken's real name) is old and tired-looking, and if you tend toward snobby impulses, your lip will curl in disdain at the hand-touched peeling paint and the ancient panel.
But 565 is loyal and wise, steadfast and true. It helped more than one airman through the frequently lean years of earning an airman's living in rural Maine. It fears not wind, nor long days in low-level maneuvers when we track wildlife by radio, nor the humiliations all airplanes suffer when teaching new pilots their craft. Nor does it suffer fools gladly. One chap, a haughty fellow with a "nothing-but-the-best-for-him" air, often found that this cursed airplane just would not start. Nor did he find it easy to land or even fly straight and level. The fellow sneered at the decomposing paint, protested the prolonged winter preheat rituals, and lamented the scarce availability of better equipment.
There was another student flying The Green Chicken in those days. An amiable fellow, delighted at having something to fly, he loved the smooth handling, the reliable power, and the old beast's ready availability. Come to think of it, this pilot never had a problem starting the old airplane. And he credited the airplane's forgiving landing characteristics with helping him through those frustrating moments brought on by flight training. From his first lesson to his first solo to his flight test, the airplane remained loyal. Five Six Five isn't doing service in the training fleet anymore, but whenever Malcolm, who works at flight service, sees the owner, he always inquires after The Green Chicken. He knows that Five Six Five isn't just another pretty face.
Dan Namowitz is a multiengine-rated commercial pilot and CFII living, flying, and instructing in Maine.
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