The Air Safety Institute’s Real Aviation Heroes PSA (pilot safety announcement) pokes a little fun at aviators whose enthusiasm isn’t matched by judgment or skill—but if you’ve hung around airports long enough to earn a rating or two, chances are you’ve done it with the help of some genuinely heroic individuals.
Can’t remember any? How about that first instructor who took the risk of climbing into the cockpit with a complete stranger? The only thing your first CFI knew about you was that you had no idea what you were doing. Whether you’d panic and yank on the controls at the first bump couldn’t have been predicted.
Lots of us don’t like simulated engine failures—but if you’re not a CFI, you’ve probably never thought about the jitters that could accompany pulling the throttle on a student for the first time. Although it’s planned so a suitable field will be within easy reach, the student may not even see it, and in any case probably won’t manage the glide well enough to land there. Sure hope that engine comes back when it’s time to go around! (Helicopter instructors teaching autorotations are in a category all their own—particularly in models with low-inertia rotor systems.)
At least instructors get to know their students well enough to have some idea of what to expect from them. Designated pilot examiners do almost nothing but fly with strangers, and mostly nervous strangers at that. As for the behavior those nerves can inspire during the flight test, we’ll quote one veteran DPE rated in both categories who was asked if he also gave helicopter checkrides. With a visible shudder, he replied, “No, I’ve got enough people trying to kill me in airplanes.”
From spinning out of uncoordinated power-on stalls to getting sideways in crosswinds to flaring eight feet above the runway, most of us have given an instructor or examiner a jolt of adrenaline somewhere along the way. We can all be grateful that most of them have the nerve—and the discipline—to shrug off that occupational hazard.
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