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Reasons to Fly
By Thomas Block
2/1/2009
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My own involvement in the piloting part of aviation began over 50 years ago. When I think back to all the reasons that I climbed into particular airplanes on particular days, there are many of them. In sheer quantity, the primary goal of most flights was pure transportation—taking myself and perhaps a couple hundred other people and/or a load of cargo to either the next town, the next state, or the next continent. But if that were the only reason to be a pilot, then all we’d be concerned about in this sort of magazine would be data and technique.
If you open up any of the past issues of Flyer, you’ll certainly find plenty of information on piloting technique and airplane performance numbers. But what you’ll also find between the front and back covers are lots of good photos and lots of good information about using airplanes in other than purely utilitarian ways. Even articles that are basically about piloting technique are usually laced with these human interest observations. To talk about the act of being a pilot has always been to talk about how the act of driving a hunk of metal (and, sometimes, fabric) around the sky brings a sense of joy and well-being to those of us who have been fortunate enough to be on board.
It doesn’t really make much difference which machine you drive. A liftoff into a smooth glass-table sky at the crack of dawn is as much a natural high in a 3,000-pound single as it is in a 300,000-pound jet—and vice versa, too. Any climb into a dead calm mass of air—that first instant after the slight tug on the control wheel has transformed the initial pitch of the machine into the sensation of melting upward—is simply a euphoric moment, period. I’m pretty sure that if the government knew how much fun it was, they would either ban the experience or, more than likely, tax it.
Dealing with clouds is another area where any given trip can turn into a romp. The flights in the big jets did provide me with more exposure to cloud-related adventures simply because those airline jets covered lots more ground both horizontally and vertically. Racing your shadow across the tops of the clouds in either a big or little machine is a thrilling (and legal) way to do a buzz job, and during my half a century of flying I found myself lingering on a climb or descent to play tag with the sun-induced image of my own airplane. Fun.
Doing a snake dance around a growing column of vertical white is another one of a pilot’s reasons to fly. In the airline, we liked to pass off our wanderings around building canyons of clouds as something that we did for passenger comfort; fact was, we did it just as much for pilot satisfaction. Don’t think that you need an airline jet to do this, either—I’ve snaked around clouds formations in every airplane I’ve ever owned, and in a good number of the other General Aviation fleet that I had in my hands when the opportunity arose.
Another high moment occurs when a pilot suddenly bursts through a smooth and solid overcast into either a sunlit or moonlit sky above. While hanging onto any airplane at that moment is a real joy, there is nothing quite like hurtling through the dank gray and into blue or star-filled skies at 4,000-plus feet per minute in a big jet.
Sometimes just the vista itself is where today’s aviation action is, and that’s where no particular airplane has an edge on any other. Watching a huge line of thunderstorms in the distance with the setting sun directly behind them is an equal experience in either a small or big airplane. Needless to say, the sensation itself is enhanced dramatically when your course line happens to be parallel, not perpendicular, to the weather. There’s nothing quite so wonderful as watching some truly horrific weather from afar, secure in the knowledge that you have no need to go in that direction.
There are lots of good sensations inside the airplane, too, although being a totally non-acrobatic kind of guy I find those sorts of thrills in more benign ways. While flying either a big or a small airplane, a jet, a prop or a piston, and regardless of whether the wings have gangs of engines on them or there’s only a single powerplant in the nose, when the needles for the ILS localizer and glideslope come together at the very end of a perfectly rounded turn onto the final approach heading, you certainly have found something satisfying to write home about.
Riding down the proverbial rails in any type of airplane, still shrouded in the smooth but heavy gray of a thick overcast, while melting off the airspeed at precisely the proper rate without having to jockey the engine power is the ultimate example of a pilot’s plan coming perfectly together. Like they say, I just love it when that happens.
Touchdowns are what the world rates us on and, even though we know better, the truth is that we do, too. I have, on occasion, greased on a light airplane to the satisfying oohs and aahs of the assembled crowd, but I must confess that there is nothing quite so good as to get that big widebody jet to end its flight of thousands of miles with a touchdown so gentle that its exact moment can’t be perceived.
Wet runways can help a great deal by providing a hydrostatic cushion to make the job easier, but that doesn’t erase one ounce of the piloting joy it produces. Any airplane will do but, again, placing those giant round rubber feet of a big jet that are so far below and behind you on the concrete in a light way makes you feel as if your hands are in the wings and your eyes are actually down at the level of the wheel struts.
I’ve found that the most repeatable sense of well-being can come at the very end of most any flight in most any type of airplane and in most any condition. Whether I had taken my own airplane around the traffic pattern for one more touch-and-go before dinner, or I’d been locked inside a Boeing’s aluminum hotel for half a day, all that’s necessary to feel really good about the flight is for it to have occurred exactly as I’d intended. I suspect that’s why piloting is far more than just mastering the technical aspects, because it combines human and machine.
On that score, I remember in particular one flight when I had the opportunity to make myself and a particular airplane meld ourselves back into one unit again after many, many years. A dozen years ago I was idly flipping through Trade-A-Plane when I found myself looking at the description of a particular airplane that I was sure I recognized from 30 years before.
I telephoned the listed owner and, after a short chat, discovered that this was, indeed, the very same airplane that I had flown for a small company for 600 flight hours just before I got my one-and-only airline job (the airline kept changing names, but I stayed right where I was) courtesy of all that multi-engine/IFR flight time. The airplane happened to be only a few hundred miles away, so I went to see it.
Taxiing up on the ramp, I couldn’t believe how good the old girl still looked. It had upgraded external features, a fresh coat of paint and new leather seats. But it was unmistakably the same machine that I had spent so many of my early flight hours in. When I looked at the instrument panel, I had the sudden feeling that I had just run into a high school girlfriend who had gotten much better looking with age.
I climbed on board with the owner. We started up and taxied out. Amazingly, everything fell to hand—those early flight hours of my youth must have made a strong impression on me—and we were not 10 minutes into the flight when I felt as if I had never left this airplane at all. In the intervening years this airplane had added 3,000 hours to its logbook, while I had added 25,000 to mine by flying a whole variety of machines of various classes and categories.
I did a touch-and-go, then a full stop landing. I thanked the owner for indulging me with a quick flight, and before I walked away from the old girl I stood on the ramp and thought about all those early trips I took around Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana and New York with her.
I learned to use the tools of the trade that served me throughout my career on this aircraft. That short morning flight had been a pure joy to me, and for the first time in all my years as a pilot I was absolutely certain that the airplane felt just as good about that particular flight as I had.
Editor-at-large Thomas Block has flown nearly 30,000 hours since his first hour of dual in 1959. In addition to his 36-year career as a U.S. Airways pilot, he has been an aviation magazine writer since 1969, and a best-selling novelist. Over the past 30 years he has owned more than a dozen personal airplanes of varying types. Send questions or comments to editor@cessnaflyer.org.
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