The decorated shirttail usually is displayed in the flight school or FBO, where dozens may be thumbtacked to the walls. It may be returned to the student when he or she earns a pilot certificate, although some are displayed until the artwork fades and the fabric begins to deteriorate. (It's been speculated that some students take that long to earn a private pilot certificate, which is not true -- although sometimes it may feel that way.)
An interesting element of this tradition is that nobody is certain how it started. A few years ago, Barry Schiff, a longtime pilot and aviation author, researched the shirttail tradition and offered several possible origins -- but he considered his findings inconclusive.
- Early instructors sat behind the student in tandem, open-cockpit airplanes. Because this was well before headsets and intercoms, the instructor might have reached forward and tugged on his shirttail to get his attention. Removing the shirttail symbolized that the soloed student no longer needed that help.
- To warn soldiers, the Army cut short the tails of dangerous or unpredictable mules. Similarly, new pilots' shirttails were cut to warn other airmen.
- Student pilots flying solo could be identified by cloth streamers trailing from their airplanes. One source for the material may have been the students' shirttails.
Schiff dedicated his December 1997 AOPA Pilot column to the subject; we've posted a link to it online.
Whatever the reason for the shirttail tradition, it's been made obsolete by some technological innovation. And the tradition itself could be heading in the same direction. Solo shirttails are notably absent from some airports and many (but not all) aviation academies and colleges.
I was at the airport in Sewanee, Tennessee, a few weeks ago to photograph Bill Kershner (see "Spinning with a Specialist," p. 24). While I was there I did a few dozen spins with Catherine Cavagnaro, a relatively new CFI who now works part-time with Kershner. An associate math professor at the University of the South in Sewanee, she's obsessed with spins, and her teaching skills are evident in the cockpit. Kershner marked 60 years of flying in March, and Cavagnaro gives him the option to reduce his own flight schedule at his spin and aerobatic school. He has been a flight instructor since 1949.
Just as I was leaving, a large group gathered in the terminal building. It turns out their friend Mercer Ferguson had just soloed at nearby Winchester Municipal Airport and was on the way back. Borrowing a suggestion from AOPA Flight Training columnist Greg Brown's book The Savvy Flight Instructor, flight instructor Rebecca Gibson (see "Why We Fly," p. 72) phoned them while Ferguson soloed. They joined the rest of the airport crowd in congratulating Ferguson -- and watched him sacrifice his shirttails to tradition. A college student, Ferguson became interested in flying after riding along during a friend's flying lesson.
But the fences sprouting at airports both large and small -- security concerns, you know -- could bring an end to that tradition by keeping people away from general aviation. Cutting off legitimate access to potential new pilots will doom our industry to a slow and painful decline. Allowing that to happen would be a tragedy.
Is the shirttail tradition still alive at your flight school? Let us know. And if it is, send along a photo of the most creatively decorated. We'll post the best ones online and may print some in a future issue of the magazine.
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