Addiction or religion?
For years, flying seemed to me to be a respectable vocation, or at worst a harmless avocation. I was as blind to the danger as the next person, brainwashed through unsuspecting use of innocuous words like career and weekend hobby. But given the obsession demonstrated by most pilots, shouldn't flying more appropriately be classified as an addiction? After all, the urge to fly differs little in character from compulsions with gambling or alcohol. In the case of aviators, victims become obsessed with the curvaceous forms of airplanes, endlessly seeking the "high" of rotation for takeoff. It starts innocently enough with a flight somewhere for lunch, piloted by a "friend." Next comes a lesson or two, followed by compulsive cravings to caress the controls and cavort with cumulus.
The insidious nature of this progression is invisible to all but the most perceptive of family and friends, at least until the victim moves on to the "hard stuff," like instrument ratings and aerobatics. Suddenly, the truth assails our loved ones like a research airplane flying into a hurricane. "Let's buy an airplane," says the aviator. "We'll skip the trip to Europe and spend our summer vacation at airshows."
By then it's too late, and we aviation junkies find ourselves looking for increasingly frequent "fixes" at the airport. Victims at this late stage develop a unique facial tic causing the eyes to roll skyward at the sound of passing aircraft, even when indoors. Next thing you know, we're battling crosswinds with broadswords and tilting at thunderheads like those taunting me today.
The most fanatically addicted aviators move couches into their hangars, where they devote all waking hours to detailing instrument panels, finessing fiberglass, and buffing aluminum. Televisions and even refrigerators are not unknown in these sheet-metal hovels. Who among us has not heard stories of some poor soul, ostracized by spouse and family, who actually took up residence in some dilapidated hangar, obsessively pursuing flight even while fleeing airport authorities like some modern-day hunchback of Notre Dame? All this in pursuit of life among the clouds....
Hmmm. Notre Dame, its sacred spire soaring skyward -- and clouds, those flighty puffs billowing across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.... If flying is not an addiction, it must be a religion. Don't we aviators venerate the spiritual aspects of flight in much the same way as worshippers at church? The proselytizing, the urge to convert others to join the assembly of aviators?
At fly-in services around the country, adherents gather their novices each weekend in the dusty reliquaries of aging hangars. There, the faithful debate doctrine from worn volumes of the Aeronautical Information Manual and gather in long lines to engage in the fellowship of pancake breakfasts. Adorned in aviator chronographs and airplane earrings, multitudes make the annual pilgrimage to Oshkosh in central Wisconsin. The most pious aviators initiate into mystical societies harking back to the Middle Ages of aviation, and known only by cryptic initials and names like AOPA, CAF, "the Ninety-Nines," and EAA.
Clearly it's time to erect an aviator's temple. There we could worship what is dear to us, tithe our flying money, and deduct the donations from our taxes.
"Nnnnaaaaaaooooouuuuuwwwww..." Huh? Excuse me for a moment...that noise. Please join me in lifting our eyes skyward. From whence comes that divine sound? Is it not the baritone siren song of a radial-engined angel? Come, let us assemble a procession, and follow our messenger to the airport. Crowned with hallowed headsets and anointed with fuel-strainer gasoline, we'll congregate Saturday at noon in the airport cafe, under the four-engine Lancaster model....
There, while others preach flying fish stories of big ones and small ones and ones that got away, I'll ponder those great Midwestern storm clouds blocking my way, grumbling and growling and spitting spears of lightning to the ground -- how at the last moment when I bowed before them and fled terrified toward the nearest airport, they parted like the Red Sea and let me pass, sparing me to toy with on another day.
Be it from addiction or religion, we aviators climb as close to God as airplane wings will take us, yet like all true spirituality it's not something you can easily talk about -- silent moments and lonely hours away from Earth, and especially the imprint on one's soul of dark clouds over Kansas, pierced by the eye of the sun.
Greg Brown was the 2000 National Flight Instructor of the Year. His books include Flying Carpet, The Savvy Flight Instructor, The Turbine Pilot's Flight Manual, Job Hunting for Pilots, and You Can Fly! Visit his Web site.
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