Flying Life: Does the landscape shape the pilot?

The desert landscape also was a change. Where the view from my Cessna 172 is usually full of lush green trees and flat farmland, I was a little disconcerted to look down and see nothing but brown sand and the foothills of the Rockies. I even saw a cactus that was nearly as tall as the old oak tree in our yard at home. It got me thinking—does the landscape actually shape the person, and more specifically, the pilot?

As an examiner, I have a unique opportunity to see not only the technical skill, but also the way pilots make decisions, their comfort level with risk, and more. After performing nine checkrides in Arizona, I certainly noticed some differences. For one, because of the great flying weather, the airspace is a mind-bogglingly busy mix of IFR and VFR traffic. In Arizona, it took twice as long to accomplish the FAA’s litany of checkride tasks, compared to in Mississippi. While this time vacuum made me more than restless, it didn’t seem to bother my applicants that it took 30 minutes to get a takeoff clearance or that we had to fly nearly 50 miles to shoot an ILS. They were just so resigned, I thought.

Now imagine airplanes stacked up in that holding pattern, every 500 feet beginning at 4,000 feet msl and going as high as 8,000 feet msl.I continued feeling sorry for the poor, beaten-down spirit of those pilots until we came to a strange marvel of pilot teamwork, located south of Phoenix, called “The Stack.” Picture, if you will, a VOR that is the initial approach fix for multiple approaches into various airports. Now imagine airplanes and helicopters doing flight training, stacked up in that holding pattern every 500 feet beginning at 4,000 feet msl and going as high as 8,000 feet msl. Do you have that cluster of chaos in mind? Now picture it uncontrolled. Surprisingly, the stack runs like a well-oiled machine, with instructors (no student pilot is allowed to speak on the stack’s CTAF) announcing their position on the radio with perfectly standard phraseology. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t flown it myself.

Here’s what the stack taught me about Arizona pilots: They’re not dreadfully resigned to their slow circumstances. They simply have accepted the fact, like their desert homesteading ancestors, that for anyone to make progress, we all have to work together. I saw it several times throughout the following days. An applicant noticed someone following us too close on the Stratus-linked iPad. My inclination was to speed up, but he chose to do a slow 360 to come in behind the other airplane and create some space. Likewise, when parking at the end of what was almost always a two-hour checkride flight, the applicants would wait on the outlying taxiway—sometimes for up to 10 minutes—if someone’s propeller was turning, rather than pulling onto the ramp and getting in the way.

I come from a land of crop dusters, where the general mentality is to get in the air, get the mission done, and then get back home. There is relative freedom to do as we please in the airspace, and the thrill of flying is ever-present. After most home checkrides, the applicant asks to take a picture with me to commemorate the joyous occasion. By contrast, no Arizona applicant requested a picture. Somewhere in the rigidity of their airspace or the unforgiving nature of their terrain, I wonder if the fun of flying gets lost? If I go back again, I’ll insist that all of my successful checkrides get a picture taken.

In this time of hoped for political correctness and careful speech, I’d like to point out that, no, we’re not all the same, and thank God for it. We all come with our own set of attitudes and ways of navigating life and flying. If you fly long enough and far enough, eventually you will come across pilots who are unlike you—pilots who may have something to teach. So, after my long week in Arizona, I came home again with a renewed appreciation for the simplicity of operating in my home airspace. But I also came back with some new lessons from my Arizona friends: Slow down. You don’t have to rush through this. We’re all in this together.