Unusual Attitude

That seems reasonable, since professionalism has led to impressive improvements in airline, military, and corporate flight safety. But the real keepers of the aviation flame are amateurs, and they always have been.

The thousands of U.S. pilots who build and fly their own aircraft every year are examples of the skill, perseverance, and risk-accepting independence that moves the art and science of flying forward. The backcountry pilots who preserve and expand remote landing sites are amateurs, and so are the vast majority of aerobatic pilots who push the limits of human and aircraft endurance and precision.

Few pilots do those things for a living. They do them because it’s their purpose.

The craftsmen who restore rare and vintage aircraft don’t do it for the money, and neither do the senior flight instructors who dedicate their time, talent, and energy to the next generation of aviators. It’s the love of the game that drives them, and that’s the very definition of amateurism.

Professionalism certainly has its place in flying. Airlines operate within a rigid set of standards designed to ensure that each pilot is an interchangeable part in a larger system. Every captain and co-pilot must use the same standardized callouts, checklists, and procedures on every flight to eliminate guesswork and errors. Their challenge is striving to perform the same tasks in the same way every time, and they do that astonishingly well.

Many airline pilots love what they do and consider it a privilege. But their flights are meant to follow the same predictable profiles, day after day and night after night, with as little variation as possible. Amateurs have no such limitations.

If a backcountry pilot figures out a way to make her Super Cub land shorter or climb steeper, she’s free to go for it. If an Alaska fishing guide in a float de Havilland Beaver wants to deliver his guests to a small lake in a confined mountain valley, he needs no one’s permission, and there’s no obligation to fly a “stabilized approach.”

Amateurism gets a bad rap from people who ought to know better. But aviation should nurture its amateurs, and not judge them by the mindless “one level of safety” that the FAA has long espoused.

It’s folly to expect lone pilots flying single-engine, piston aircraft to and from nontowered airports to rack up the same stellar safety record as airline crews flying multiengine turbojets at towered airports. By the same token, it’s equally absurd to expect professionals to innovate, experiment, and take the bold actions that can lead to major improvements. Their interest is maintaining, not necessarily advancing, the status quo, and getting paid as much as the market will bear while doing it.

The Wright brothers were amateurs. Charles Lindbergh was dubbed the “flying fool” before his successful Atlantic crossing transformed him into the “lone eagle.” Wiley Post pioneered high-altitude flight largely on his own.

Curtis Pitts built his first aerobatic biplane out of cobbled-together parts, and he seemed genuinely surprised that there turned out to be a market for plans, then kits, and eventually fully finished and FAA-certified airplanes.

Dick VanGrunsven, inventor of the RV series of experimental/amateur-built kit airplanes, found creative ways to make versatile new designs from the same materials and air-cooled engines that had been around for decades.

These amateurs, prize-seekers, entrepreneurs, and record-setters ended up creating entirely new businesses and industries that seemed like lunacy to the professionals of their era.

The revolution that has taken place in avionics where GPS has largely replaced radio navigation and digital glass panels have made analog gauges obsolete was led, in part, by amateur hobbyists and tinkerers.

Electric propulsion, low-cost fly-by-wire control systems, and self-flying vehicles appear on the cusp of bringing major changes to aviation. All this innovation is creating entirely new sub-industries and exciting opportunities, as well as some heartfelt nostalgia for the way things were. But regardless of exactly how this tumultuous period in aviation shakes out, count on amateurs to lead the way.