A Pilot's Perspective

Walk into my office in my house in Bangor, Maine, and two things are likely to catch your eye. One is the wall-to-wall aeronautical map that's really a taped-together collage of sectional charts stretching to the geographic limits of my usual flying. The other is the pair of picture frames hanging beside the chart. Crammed into the frames are dozens of snapshots - images of the 20 years of my life that I call my aviation years. Come to think of it, I don't have any photos from my pre-aviation years hanging anywhere.

I'll confide that many of the photos aren't very hot properties from a technical standpoint. I'll get no A's for exposure or composition. Nor is there much variety - people and airplanes in some shots, airplanes and people in others. There are aerial panoramas of favorite places, a tight formation of Blue Angels zipping by, and a portrait of two young women pilots grinning from ear to ear in the cockpit of a parked DC-3. Then there's the action shot snapped by my niece, Shana, as I was preparing to land in Northampton, Massachusetts, while delivering her back to college after she spent fall break visiting my family in Maine. That photo, taken as we rolled into a descending left turn, is actually a nice shot. All the grainy, out-of-focus, and ill-composed creations displayed on my office wall are my own handiwork. But to me, every one is precious. Even the shots I refer to as my wingstrut series - showing a wingstrut and a cloud or a wingstrut and a mountain - are as priceless as a Picasso.

So if artistry isn't the point, it must be the people and airplanes that matter, and my acquittal of photographic malpractice resides in the fact that any effort to record these friends and times is worthy. That photo in the lower left corner of the frame isn't just a shot of some guys lounging on the front stoop of a hangar at a grass strip. It's a potent reminder of a summer day spent discovering new friends, new airplanes, and a new sanctuary for the practice of aviation. To the rest of the world, there's nothing special about two men and a teenager posing in front of a Cessna 182. But I know that it was the day of the teenager's first airplane ride. I also know that a few years later one of the men in the photograph suffered an early-morning heart attack and it was other fellow in the picture, a doctor, who appeared in the emergency room to bring his flying friend back from the brink. Since then, both these pilots and friends have overcome medical hurdles to return to flying, and aviation is better off for their presence on the scene.

A nose-on view of a Cessna 172 being refueled on a snowy ramp makes a dull photograph but a vivid reminder of a hard winter day's flying highlighted by an encounter with ice in the clouds, a diversion to an alternate airport, and a lot of learning. In another view, a taildragger rolling into the scene at a country strip on a summer day is a reminiscence of fresh-picked wild blueberries, and the realization of a dream of living in a certain little cabin in the woods and flight instructing from a certain little airport. A photo of two pilots shot from just outside the cockpit of a Falcon 20 en route to Ocala, Florida, in 1985, is no prize-winner. No wonder; it was taken, not by a skilled photographer, but by a ground-bound newspaperman who had begun to molt into a pilot. Now it reminds him of how, with joyful dereliction of duty, he shunned his obligation to interview the celebrity back in the cabin so he could watch the pilots fly the sexy jet.

This is the dialog a visitor to my office will hear, having strolled over to look at the photos on the wall. Whether the visitor has expressed any interest in flying or is merely curious as to why such an unremarkable collection is worthy of display, he or she is nibbling on an aviation hook but doesn't know it yet. I suggest to my visitor that a tour of the photo gallery often leads to a tour of the airport, and it just so happens that I have some minor business to attend to at the airport today. (Arguably, I always have business at the airport.) In any case, the visitor is welcome to tag along. And it is when a newcomer accompanies me on an airborne mission that I am best reminded of why the pursuit of flight, so different and unrelated to anything I had ever previously undertaken, casts the same spell over modern newcomers and disciples as it did over its discoverers and the pioneers of nearly a century ago, not to mention the storytellers and dreamers of ancient times.

Today I am conducting just such an airport tour, long promised to a former grad-school classmate and now, happily, under way. I remind myself, as I do every time, that unjaded by knowledge of aviation's pecking order, the newcomer arrives on the scene agog. Everything from the student pilot having his logbook signed inside the office to the corporate jet captain awaiting her upscale passengers in the pilot's lounge is mysterious and captivating. So are the aircraft both these individuals fly. The visitor instantly grasps that he or she is witness to rituals and traditions unknown to those who have never passed through the looking-glass on the street side of the terminal door. Questions flow. That airplane over there, what is it? Is it easy to fly? How much would it cost? Could you fly that? What's the biggest airplane you have ever flown? (I don't know why that question is so important, but most nonflying guests seem to like to ask it.)

Hardware is fine, but aviation is nothing, I tell the visitor, without its people-the people you fly with and hangar fly with, and the ones who maintain and fuel your airplane and even sneak it into a hangar the night before a particularly nasty storm. Introductions are made, and the visitor is made to feel at home, which means being subjected to a blast of airport humor, mostly at my expense. (The airport staff are willing accomplices in my tour-giving and play their roles as airport wags to perfection.) We chat with the latest transient pilots and hear their tales of far-away places recently left behind or soon to be seen. Then we drop in on the local government-employed weather wizards (flight service specialists to the initiated), who greet me as an old friend at the counter of their darkened technological temple before slipping into the mystical language of scattered-to-broken cloud decks; freezing levels; temps; dew points; winds forecast to blow at X, gusting Y; pireps; and notams.

Fascinated, the guest steps back outside into the sunshine, and a common question now is whether today would be a good day for a first-timer to fly. On a recent warm day the answer was, "It would be nice right now, but probably a bit bumpy this afternoon." How do I know that is usually the next question. I point at the sky, and we talk about clouds, sun, and wind. We discuss the way experience and observation show you what the air is doing and how the ride would be. We talk about how these patterns repeat themselves day after day, year in and year out - repetitions the newcomer has seen over a lifetime but never thought about before. Now, after a single hour spent looking at things from a pilot's perspective, life is new and different.

This notion of a pilot's perspective is not something we leave at the airport after the tour has ended. The airman's creed translates into a terrestrial ethic as well. No pilot will get far in aviation without accepting that he or she, rather than happenstance, has responsibility for the results of each action and inaction. Passing blame never coaxed a silent engine into running again or made the wind stop blowing. Pilots soon learn that if they feel have been the victims of unfairness, they should complain to someone - after the problem is solved. Pilots must never let their sense of priorities fail them, especially if they have taken on the responsibility for the well-being of another. Being entrusted with the safety of a passenger or student is the highest compliment and the most solemn responsibility - at least, that is how the pilots I most admire see it.

But I also see, and share, how these pilots revel in the unending optimism of flight. Is the moment of liftoff any less miraculous in the thousandth flight hour than in the first? Is the miracle less astonishing for understanding the principles that cause it to occur? Is a new passenger's amazement at his or her first airborne view of a familiar landscape ever less than perfectly wonderful? What could be more joyful for a flight instructor than to place an enthused beginner in the left seat of an airplane, and together, take that airplane for a walk in the sky? For me, these things are the apex. They are also the things that make up for the occasional chasms of culture between pilots on one hand and pundits, policy- makers, and public perception on the other. I hope I have learned to tolerate, as a burden of my calling as a flight instructor, the stereotyping of pilots by "experts" and opinion leaders in media and public life. All any one person can do to combat the effects of these false prophets is to teach the truth by example. Yes, I still brace for the next dinner party where someone approaches to tell me the story of a harrowing passage in a "small plane." And yes, to be introduced at a gathering as a pilot often is to be made to listen to uninformed sermons such as the ones about little planes clogging up big airports - at which time I ask the speaker if he has foresworn driving on interstate highways to clear the way for trucks and buses. Traveling as an airline passenger, and knowing how patience is a pilot's saving virtue, I am ready when the fellow standing next in line remarks on the inconvenience to his schedule of the latest weather delays. I opine that thunderstorms, icing, gale-force winds, and rivet-popping turbulence do not appear to be a better deal than waiting here in the terminal, a few paces from the coffee shop, for a less-risky opportunity. And I have promised myself that the next time a news organization reports that an accident occurred "on a routine training mission," I will point out that no pilot worthy of the name considers any flight "routine" until after the fact.

Recognizing and minimizing risk - this is what we learn as we polish our skill over a lifetime of flying. Soon after entering into my first aeronautical employment, I realized with surprise that it is harder to say no than yes, when the self-interest of an "important" passenger, or your own financial well-being as a hireling pilot, are pitted against your instinct and judgment. But do say no if it is the right thing to do. Let the waves of anger or the threats of discontinued employment break over you. And, on occasion, receive the thanks of those who may have come to realize that you were protecting them from themselves.

If training, responsibility, and a sense of joyful achievement are the ethic of the air, subscribing to their tenets often hones a pilot's sense of irony about life on the ground. Here in my corner of the world, there is a push on to kill a few thousand more moose during an annual hunt because moose, it is argued, tend to run out into the roads and collide with cars. But we hear no one pushing to train drivers to be more alert and capable of eluding these gigantic targets. (A simulator could do some good work here.)

Any pilot knows that you don't earn your ticket to fly without demonstrating the ability to deal with "realistic distractions" as a measure of your safety-mindedness. Can you imagine the uproar if some safety agency proposed tougher training requirements for auto drivers to include similar training and standards?

Enough sermonizing. Aren't pilots a wonderfully opinionated bunch? On just about everything? That's why it is very likely you'll find just as many aviators lurking at the airport on foul-weather days as when the sun is shining. And even though you've been out to the field only once on a tour, next time, you're part of the family. I predict that life as seen from a pilot's perspective will keep you coming back for more.