Flying Life: A risk worth taking

The business of living and working and playing has always required a certain amount of courage. The news is filled with school shootings, serial bombers, and terrorist attacks. Sometimes it feels as if we should all just stay safely locked inside our homes. But if we want to life full lives, we have to make peace with the fact that we will be sacrificing some of our security to do so. Our most worthy pursuits almost always require taking a risk of some sort.

Pilots demonstrate that brave human spirit particularly well. Whether you believe in God, the Tooth Fairy, or the Jolly Green Giant, we know we are depending on the good graces of something whenever we take off. Despite all our talk about mitigating risk, good weather decision making, and keeping our aircraft well-maintained, some things are just out of our hands, no matter how well trained we are. As an FAA designated pilot examiner, my applicants frequently teach me things about flying, and about life. I was once giving a private pilot checkride for a gentleman who made his own checklist by pulling the required tasks from the POH and adding some items of his own. “Fuel pump…check,” he read aloud. “Flaps…check. Say a prayer…check.” Here was a pilot who was acknowledging the fact that flying involves some risk, but he was daily choosing courage as his modus operandi.

“It was like we suddenly hit a brick wall,” he told me.Another pilot I fly with on the Beechjet, Jim Corkern, recently told me a story about a trip he took with his wife and two friends in their Beechcraft Bonanza A36. Corkern, a highly experienced, retired FedEx pilot, was flying from Olive Branch, Mississippi, to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, enjoying a westerly tailwind and a perfectly smooth, VFR day. There was no precipitation in the area. The nearest cloud layer was above him by several thousand feet. When he was about 10 miles east of Knoxville, Tennessee, descending through 5,000 feet for his approach into Gatlinburg, Corkern experienced severe clear air turbulence. “It was like we suddenly hit a brick wall,” he told me. The downdraft was so strong that everyone’s heads hit the ceiling—despite the fact that they were all, thankfully, wearing their seatbelts. The front-seat passenger would later report that he remembers looking over and seeing Corkern slumped in his seat, head lolling forward on his chest. Corkern’s memory of that 30 seconds is hazy at best, considering that the knock on the head momentarily had him seeing stars. Somewhere in the haze, Corkern managed to make a mayday call and pull what he thought was the throttle to idle, a move that prevented the airplane from overspeeding and probably saved their lives. When he regained his wits, the Bonanza was in a left turning descent at 3,200 feet; and the engine had stopped. Corkern then realized that he had pulled the mixture to idle instead of the throttle, and was able to get the engine restarted quickly.

By this time, ATC was calling, asking if they were OK. “Sir, we’ve never seen anything like that. You were instantly descending at over 3,600 feet per minute.” Corkern made the rest of the approach and landing into Gatlinburg without incident. When he got everyone out of the airplane, he learned that his wife’s head was bleeding—a fact she had kept to herself, knowing Corkern had enough to handle.

Scared by Corkern’s story and wanting to learn something from it, I asked him if he knew what caused the turbulence. Although they were near the Smoky Mountains, Corkern was flying on the upwind side, which should have prevented him from encountering any mountain waves. “Natalie, I wish I could tell you that I saw a strange cloud or had some warning, but there was nothing. The most I can figure is that it was a downdraft caused by frontal activity. But in 47 years of flying, I’ve never experienced anything like that. I figure my chances are pretty good that I’ll never see anything like that again. If I learned anything, it’s this: Wear a tight seatbelt and say your prayers.”

Here’s hoping that we can all realize, like Corkern, that some risks are worth taking. Aviation is one of those. We know every time we line up for a takeoff that bad things can happen. Engines do quit. Weather can sneak up on us. But we fly anyway—not because we are reckless, but because we have made the decision to refuse to let fear keep us from doing what we love. AOPA

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