So long

But my experience is dwarfed by that of friends my age who’ve been flying since their teens—with logbook totals well into five figures, not just four.

Twenty years is still enough time to see and do remarkable things—and readers of this magazine know how flight elevates the otherwise routine. I still feel the thrill of seeing the Charlottesville, Virginia, airport appear exactly where it was supposed to be on my first solo cross-country. The beauty of the moon swimming up through an undercast above the Chesapeake Bay and the excitement tinged with terror of my instructor’s initial demonstration of a practice autorotation are sensations I hope I’ll never forget. And equally remarkable is that for more than a dozen years—some 60 percent of my entire flying career—the editors of Flight Training have honored me with space in their pages.

That run, as you may have guessed, is now nearing its end. I hope to reappear from time to time, but I’ll no longer be a scheduled contributor. Everyone who’s read even one of these columns has earned my lasting gratitude. To thank you—or maybe prove that no good deed goes unpunished—I’ll leave you with a couple of conclusions drawn from that experience:

People can learn … but not everyone will. The mechanics of stalls, including accelerated and uncoordinated, were already well understood when Wolfgang Langewiesche published Stick and Rudder in 1944—but unintended low-altitude stalls are still among the most common types of fatal fixed-wing accidents. Three hours of hood training doesn’t convince all VFR pilots that the seat of their pants doesn’t know which way is up. And bypassing readily available fuel stops to wring maximum endurance from the tanks bets the flight’s outcome on a coin toss.

None of this is news—but more than a century’s accumulated experience doesn’t always penetrate the space between the headphones.

Technology won’t save us. Think drivers tailgate more since the advent of anti-lock brakes? When I took driver’s ed in 1974, we were taught to maintain a two-second following distance regardless of speed. Last time I measured, I was less than one second behind the preceding car on the Interstate—and still leaving more space than those before or behind me.

While innovations like airframe parachutes, moving maps, and synthetic vision promise to reduce or mitigate specific hazards, a seemingly ironclad principle of psychology is that some will use them to expand capability rather than increase safety. An autopilot driven by IFR-certified GPS can increase the temptation to try one’s luck in marginal visibility. And the equipment’s limitations aren’t always well understood. Pilots unaware of the processing delays have come to grief trying to use Nexrad downloads to pick their way around thunderstorm cells.

As long as aircraft are operated by humans and humans remain fallible, the last line of defense isn’t sensors and microchips. It’s you, the care you take, and the decisions you make. The fact that you read this magazine suggests you’re off to a good start.

So don’t panic. The answer is still 42.

David Jack Kenny admits to having written this on a Southwest flight from BWI to ABQ.P.S.

If you haven’t read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, find a copy. You owe it to yourself.