Flying
by Michael E. Marotta
Flying an airplane requires the integration of complex knowledge and uncompromising virtues in order to perform an unequivocal task. Flying is a supremely intellectual challenge that earns complete emotional satisfaction -- but only after the fact, because emotions have no place in the process. Flying expands your consciousness and extends your awareness in space and time, of course, but also in society. Pilots think, talk, and act differently from other people. Pilots know each other on sight.
In the simplest terms, flying an airplane is not very hard at all. Airplanes are built to fly. There are true stories of planes that have taken off and landed without pilots. Even those that came down hard for lack of fuel flew just fine with no one at the controls. The challenge comes from putting your will at the controls. We say, "Never let the plane take you anyplace your mind has not been five minutes earlier."
Piloting a personal aircraft requires thinking in three dimensions at 100 mph. Physics, trigonometry, and meteorology are the baseline of knowledge. You learn to do them in your head. You can take your cues from a line of clouds on the horizon, or from a herd of cows on the ground. For a pilot, Earth's magnetic field is a bundle of shifting tubes.
Pilots kill themselves and their passengers when they rely on instinct, fly by the seat of their pants, and trust their senses. It has happened that a crew of three certified professionals of an international carrier has agreed among themselves to make the same deadly mistake that brings down the careless weekender. Trusting their senses, rather than their instruments, pliots fly into the classic "graveyard spiral." Flying is extremely cerebral.
Relative to other things Americans do, aviation has always been heavily regulated. In the post-911 world, that has been compounded. Aviation in other nations -- like much else -- tends to be even more regulated than America, though there are some interesting exceptions. Aviation has always been a one-mistake environment, where we thank the designers for creating craft that we say are "forgiving." Today, the Air Force is less forgiving. If you see a fighter jet on your wing, make no mistake: he's there for you. It is your responsibility to know where the President of the United States is, and to avoid him.
You also need to avoid thunderstorms. That seems easy enough if you live on the ground. The fact is that turbulences roil 30 kilometers from a cumulonumbus anvil, in air that looks "clear" to two-dimensional beings. People on the ground feel themselves "pushed" by the wind. An airplane is carried by it: you travel in it and with it.
As heavily regulated as aviation is, the pilot cannot rely on controllers. Pilots have been directed into mountains -- and it is pilot error when that happens because the pilot is responsible, not the controller. In fact, the first federal regulation of aviation is that a pilot can break any other regulation to maintain safety.
For all of this, aviation is not dangerous, but only complicated. Flying is basically safe because pilots avoid risk. "There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots." A pilot will spend as much time planning a flight as making it. Walking up to an airplane is part of the inspection, which is carried out according to a checklist.
Everything that happens to a pilot is a direct consequence of the primacy of existence. That has social consequences. I have never met a pilot who was rude. Communication can be direct, but it is always respectful because it begins with self-respect.
You push the throttle forward. Your ground speed builds. You feel the authority come to your feet on the rudder and to your fingertips on the yoke. That is all it takes: your thumb and two fingertips. You pull back on the yoke and you rise. The arithmetic defines your optimum rate of ascent. If are you doing it by the numbers, then you are doing it right. Everything you knew is behind you and beneath you, and on the way up and out, you pass a hawk.
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