Pilots are Sexy
Today I met a pilot at the Santa Monica Airport.
He's a nice guy, about my age, likes to hang out at the airport and watch the planes land. Santa Monica hosts both small general-aviation aircraft and the bigger corporate jets that fly regular interstate routes, and it's got only one runway, so it's interesting to watch how the controllers weave all the traffic together.
This guy I met has been taking flying lessons for a month or so, flying on average five days a week, an hour at a time. He's been a quick study, I guess, according to his instructor, who said that he'd qualified to solo more quickly than any student he's ever had.
Private pilot training is divided into two phases: basic flight training; that is, learning to take off, fly around, not crash, talk to controllers, land. This phase culminates in the solo flight, when the student flies the plane alone for the first time.
Then, once one knows how to fly, one learns navigation: reading maps, using navigation instruments, flying long trips from one airport to another to another.
Today was my friend's first solo flight. He flew with a different instructor, first, to get a second opinion: yes, his skills are such that we trust him in the plane alone. The different instructor taught much differently than his main instructor, having him do unfamiliar maneuvers and fly under different conditions, in a plane he was unfamiliar with. My friend was a little nervous.
But then he got back with his normal instructor, in the plane he'd learned in, and managed to pull himself together. They did touch-and-goes: circling the field, landing, taking off, circling again. Then he pulled the plane off the taxiway and let the instructor out.
It was sort of gusty, and there was a lot of air traffic in the area, and it was getting late in the day, but he pressed on; he took off, circled, got diverted on approach by the tower, and finally eased the plane down to kiss the pavement. "Nice job on final approach," the tower said, uncharacteristically conversational.
He gunned the engine, took off, and went around again. A perfect landing. And a third time: a little overeager; a little harder touching down. But nothing broken.
He taxied back to pick up his instructor, who shook his hand. "Congratulations!" The instructor wrote in my friend's logbook: "1st solo!!" Two exclamation points. One more than usual.
My new friend is a better driver than I am. He's more aware of his environment. He's working harder than I normally work, studying charts and regulations and procedures. He gets up a lot earlier than I do, and he is well on his way to a significant accomplishment: his Private Pilot certificate. Already, soloed, he has successfully performed an exceedingly difficult task that has a very narrow margin for error.
His plan, he told me, as we sat outside watching the air traffic come and go, is to fly to the airport where his father still visits. His father, once a pilot, now watches from the ground as his past climbs into the clouds. His father's health, he refuses to admit, is deteriorating.
His father knows nothing of his flying lessons, yet.
His plan is to fly to where his father sits watching, open the cabin door, wave his hand and say "Here I am, Dad. Hop in and I'll take you for a ride."
His name, as you may have guessed, is Me.
He's a nice guy, about my age, likes to hang out at the airport and watch the planes land. Santa Monica hosts both small general-aviation aircraft and the bigger corporate jets that fly regular interstate routes, and it's got only one runway, so it's interesting to watch how the controllers weave all the traffic together.
This guy I met has been taking flying lessons for a month or so, flying on average five days a week, an hour at a time. He's been a quick study, I guess, according to his instructor, who said that he'd qualified to solo more quickly than any student he's ever had.
Private pilot training is divided into two phases: basic flight training; that is, learning to take off, fly around, not crash, talk to controllers, land. This phase culminates in the solo flight, when the student flies the plane alone for the first time.
Then, once one knows how to fly, one learns navigation: reading maps, using navigation instruments, flying long trips from one airport to another to another.
Today was my friend's first solo flight. He flew with a different instructor, first, to get a second opinion: yes, his skills are such that we trust him in the plane alone. The different instructor taught much differently than his main instructor, having him do unfamiliar maneuvers and fly under different conditions, in a plane he was unfamiliar with. My friend was a little nervous.
But then he got back with his normal instructor, in the plane he'd learned in, and managed to pull himself together. They did touch-and-goes: circling the field, landing, taking off, circling again. Then he pulled the plane off the taxiway and let the instructor out.
It was sort of gusty, and there was a lot of air traffic in the area, and it was getting late in the day, but he pressed on; he took off, circled, got diverted on approach by the tower, and finally eased the plane down to kiss the pavement. "Nice job on final approach," the tower said, uncharacteristically conversational.
He gunned the engine, took off, and went around again. A perfect landing. And a third time: a little overeager; a little harder touching down. But nothing broken.
He taxied back to pick up his instructor, who shook his hand. "Congratulations!" The instructor wrote in my friend's logbook: "1st solo!!" Two exclamation points. One more than usual.
My new friend is a better driver than I am. He's more aware of his environment. He's working harder than I normally work, studying charts and regulations and procedures. He gets up a lot earlier than I do, and he is well on his way to a significant accomplishment: his Private Pilot certificate. Already, soloed, he has successfully performed an exceedingly difficult task that has a very narrow margin for error.
His plan, he told me, as we sat outside watching the air traffic come and go, is to fly to the airport where his father still visits. His father, once a pilot, now watches from the ground as his past climbs into the clouds. His father's health, he refuses to admit, is deteriorating.
His father knows nothing of his flying lessons, yet.
His plan is to fly to where his father sits watching, open the cabin door, wave his hand and say "Here I am, Dad. Hop in and I'll take you for a ride."
His name, as you may have guessed, is Me.
