I have spent some time stealing other people’s souls.
Gail, all smiles
So for better, or worse, here’s some of mine in return.
As part of the GYFT’s program, a grant scheme for budding aviators under 21, applicants must produce
An essay of 1,000 words (maximum) is required from applicants and forms an important component of this application. It should be word processed and double-spaced. The essay will be judged on the following elements:
Element 1: Why do you want to become a pilot and how important is it to you to learn to fly and perhaps pursue a career in aviation?
Why do you want to become a pilot?
What a good question. The first thing to notice is that it says, why do you want to become a pilot, not; why does someone else want you to become a pilot.
Perhaps all of us should answer that question. We all have loved ones, family, friends, acquaintances. Don’t they deserve an answer to such a question?
Once people learn that you take to the skies in craft considerably smaller than what they are familiar with, the question is often asked in all kinds of roundabout ways.
“So where does this lead to? What is the point?” You can see them backing away slightly, the real question, “are you deranged?” writ on their face.
At first, it seems easy. “It’s the most fantastic feeling you will ever have,” you can honestly say. But then you think, that’s not enough, that’s not the whole story.
It’s not enough, because there are also downsides. Maybe there are some people who can jump in a plane from day one, never feel terror, never doubt their confidence, never feel the misery that comes from crushed ambition when the mind and body conspire to make you an idiot. If you are such a person, keep away from me. I don’t want to know you.
It’s not enough, because the short duration of that pure selfish feeling of joy isn’t enough to sustain. The description also, in a subtle way, demeans the listener. “You will never know what it’s like because your life is pathetic, unlike my super-dooper fantastic existence.”
I turned to the Internet for some help.
PPrune has nice thread. Answer, “chicks dig pilots.” Yeah, right.
William Langewiesche, son of Wolfgang, has this great quote that seems to answer the question.
“How can you not fly when you live in a time in history when you can fly?”
But this presupposes you know what the feeling is like, again it is simply pilots talking to pilots, the precursor to the same old macho crap that’s almost as harmful to brain and hearing as plane engine noise.
I have heard of people who go for a Trail Instruction Flight, and realise that it is not for them. I admire such people, they are truly lucky. They have escaped the uncertainty, the fear, the doubt, the expense. Do you think your life is richer for flying? OK, prove it. You answer me in the comment box below, “Why are you a pilot? Why do you want to become a pilot?”
Even people have flown many hours, over many years, give it away. Who are you to say, “they lacked this, they lacked that.”
And to those who have wasted their marriages, their careers, have lost their sons, what do you say to them. “Life dealt you a hand.” Or, “some days are diamonds, some days are stones.”
Once club president Joe Newham and I were handing over a raffle prize, a TIF gift certificate. A lady managing a nearby hotel, who was also donating a prize, said to Joe and I, “are you pilots?”
Joe looked up with a Top Gun piercing look and said, “Yes ma’am, we’re both pilots.”
I gently corrected him. “Joe is an instructor, and I am a student.”
I don’t care too much about having a pilot certification. It’s nice, simply because it’s an achievement, and it means there’s less hassle when I hire the club plane.
However, I always regard myself first and foremost as a “student of flight.” To always have curiosity, to always be in awe, always hold that feeling of delicious anxiety. To always think before I jump in the cabin, “the decision I make now cannot easily be reversed.”
But all this is too hard to explain to someone who is backing off anyway. The best I can do is, “Flying is fun. I like it.”
But, between you and me, my fellow deranged addict, I can say this. “Flying is the best fun. God I love it.”
Jamie Honan, his first lesson with Greg Davies
