As I was taxiing out for departure, I glanced over at the parking lot and
saw a kid by the fence, watching airplanes. It was a classic picture, the
airport kid, something we so rarely see anymore. In a baseball cap, go-to-hell
shirt and jeans, astride a bike and leaning on the fence, I couldn't tell
whether the kid was male or female. What I could see were eyes that held mine
and stopped me cold, right there on the taxiway. I saw eyes burning with a
hunger for flight that could not be extinguished short of death. I saw such an
honest and absolute determination to fly that I involuntarily hit the brakes
hard enough for the airplane to bob up and down on the nose strut. There was
no begging or pleading in those eyes, just a look of desire that was as
intense as any I'd ever seen. I suddenly realized I could have been looking at
my teenaged self. I knew precisely what was going on behind those eyes, for I,
too had felt the same fire at that age. I knew every one of the feelings that
drove the look I saw and knew how powerful the feelings for flight can be in
the heart of an airport kid.
I've just realized that while I've been sitting here in the lounge thinking
about the kid, I've written two letters. I'll share the second one with you
next month. The first I'll let you read in a moment. It's a letter to that
kid. I just hope I can deliver it someday — I didn't even get the kid's name.
Dear Airport Kid...
I hope you don't mind the appellation. Believe it or not, it's a term of
respect, and perhaps endearment, that has long been applied to the teenagers
who frequent little airports, and although older pilots would probably profanely
deny any such flowery sentiment, the very vehemence of their denials would
actually verify the truth of their affection for the teenagers at their
airport. So, anyway, at an airport, it's not bad to be called
"kid."
I
was the one who slid the tires stopping my airplane in front of you today. I
saw you sitting on your bicycle, looking through the airport fence. I don't
know if it was my ongoing fury at the stupidity of erecting large fences at
little airports that keep out the very people we wish to attract, or the
intensity with which you were looking at the airplanes, that made me first pay
attention to you. Perhaps it was because you seemed to be very nearly the age
I was when I started learning to fly, and are using a bicycle for
transportation because you aren't yet old enough to drive.
Yeah, I'm an old guy — over 40 — but I sure enjoyed talking with you. I
enjoyed it because we spoke a common language, that of flight. You obviously
have read a lot and taught yourself much. It's okay that you mispronounced
some of the words that you had read, simce you had never had the chance to
hear them spoken aloud.
As we talked and you asked me questions about technical matters and details
of things that interested you, I was reminded of the fresh perspective of
someone just coming to flight and how hard it is to keep some of the oddly
contradictory things straight. You said it didn't make any sense that when an
airplane was flying toward the west that it was "westbound," but
when the wind was blowing that same direction that it was "an east
wind." I agreed and pointed out that one has to do rote memorization of
some things until you acquire the perspective to understand the reasons. We
talked about the recent article we'd both read explaining that the method of
referring to wind direction was established hundreds of years before the
method of describing the direction an airplane was moving was ever considered.
You spoke of the windsock in almost poetic terms. You described to me how
it looked to you from the ground. You had only seen it from below, watching it
standing above you — a majestic tube of orange doing the regal duty of
serving pilots, providing information of vital importance. Then, later, when
you saw it from above for the very first time, you could not believe that
something so large and brightly colored could ever be difficult to see, but
you also saw why new pilots sometimes read it backwards and land downwind.
You had spent hours at that fence. You had gazed on the taxiways and the
runway that I took for granted. You saw the cracks and irregularities in the
pavement and you had even planned how you would guide an airplane so as to
miss the bumps when you finally would have a chance to taxi to the runway.
Gateways and doorways
You
described the runway as a gateway. You said it was a gateway to the entire
world. Looking through your eyes I saw how correct you were. You told me that
from that airport any person could taxi to that runway and take off in a
little airplane and go anywhere. I wished I had thought of that way of looking
at runways. Because of you, that strip of asphalt suddenly became more
valuable than Oz's fabled yellow brick road. The road only lead to the Emerald
City, a runway leads us to anywhere we can dream of going. The concept also
caused me to shudder with the wave of anger as I thought of the evil involved
in the action of anyone who would destroy a runway, anywhere, and kill the
dreams of kids such as you. And I realized the monstrous evil of Mayor Daley
of Chicago and his plan to terminate the dreams of the inner-city children who
see the runway at Meigs Field as the gateway to a bigger world and better
life. You made a big impression on me, kid.
You told me that you lived about three miles away and rode your bike to the
airport whenever you could because you liked airplanes. You had discovered the
aviation magazines in your school library and had also read all its aviation
books. You had figured out that you could get other books through
inter-library loan programs. You impressed me. Making the effort to get to the
airport and reading all you can about flying show that you are willing to
accomplish what you set out to do. You don't know it yet, but your
determination, perseverance and willingness to work toward your goals will
take you a long way in this world ... whatever you choose to do.
You said your parents understand your desire to learn to fly but don't have
the money to pay for it. Fortunately, it doesn't look as though they will
stand in your way when (please don't say "if") you find a way to
learn. You are very lucky — too many kids your age have their dreams wrung
out of them by the naysayers and moles and those who flee from the fullness of
life and cannot or will not understand what it is to fly.
You asked me some questions about the elevator trim tab because in diagrams
it seemed to you as if it worked backwards. The best way to show how it worked
was to look at an airplane, so I did the necessary stuff to get you through
the security fence and we used my airplane to look at how the flight controls
operate. I watched the light bulb light over your head as suddenly the simple
and elegant way trim tabs work made sense to you. I then offered you a brief
airplane ride. I wish I could explain what I saw in your eyes as you accepted
the offer.
The
cabin door was open because we had been moving control surfaces and looking at
the control wheel. I showed you my flight instructor certificate and suggested
that you take the left seat. Watching you gingerly get into the airplane, I
was suddenly thrust back to the first time a flight instructor told me to get
into the left seat. I was initially overwhelmed, because to me that was the
pilot's seat and it would be presumptuous for me to sit in that holy place. I,
too, got into that wonderful chair very carefully. As I watched you go through
the open door, I realized that when I had passed through a similar door 32
years ago, it wasn't just a door to an airplane. I entered a doorway to
adventure. That open, beckoning door opened an entire new world to me, one
that I would not trade for anything. If you want it badly enough, that door to
adventure is still open. I hope that maybe you got a glimpse of what is on the
other side today.
You had a very brief, introductory lesson. We started the airplane and you
taxied it. Together we did a runup, then you used the rudders to steer the
airplane on takeoff. You learned about attitude flying and how to put the nose
just above the horizon while at full power to make the airplane climb, and
then how placing the nose below the horizon and setting cruise power generated
level flight. You started to learn how the airplane felt and that you did not
have to keep it in the air with muscle and main force. You didn't really ever
relax because there was so much happening and you were so excited beneath your
cultivated cool exterior, but you did learn you couldn't squeeze juice out of
a plastic control wheel.
After we landed and shut down, we talked about your impressions of the
flight and the way the airplane was much more responsive than you expected,
then you retrieved your bike and rode off. I'm not convinced the wheels of the
bike were touching the ground. Keep that slip of paper on which I wrote the
date, type of airplane, what we did and how long we flew. I signed it and put
my instructor's number on it. That flying time counts. Staple it in your
logbook when you get one.
Unspoken questions
While we were talking, you asked me several very probing questions without
using words. The questions were precisely the same ones I was too shy or too
afraid to verbalize when I was your age. Because we didn't talk about them
while we were together, I'll do my best to answer them for you now. Your
audacious outfit, hairstyle and jewelry is designed for many things, including
aggravating adults and asserting your independence, which you must do as part
of growing up. It is also partly your way of trying to hide the question that
worries you more than anything in the world: Will you be good enough? Behind
your surface braggadocio, you want desperately to know whether you really can
accomplish the goal that is so important to you that you are hesitant to even
mention what it is you want to anyone. That is why you went to the airport by
yourself and why you have been too shy to approach the pilots you have seen.
It's okay to have that gnawing uncertainty about whether you can do this thing
you want to do.
So,
let's answer that question right up front: Yes, you are good enough. You can
learn to fly and do so very well. You displayed your intelligence when we
talked. I heard you express yourself and discuss technical matters, ask good
questions and listen to the answers. I saw how you handled the airplane when
we flew. I certainly couldn't help but observe that you had the underlying
drive to get to the airport in the first place. You definitely have the
ability, intelligence and drive to reach your goal of flight. That uncertainty
you feel is actually going to help you. It is going to form part of the drive
you will use to keep going and learn to fly and show yourself and others that
you can accomplish your goals.
You will make mistakes. All of us do. It's okay to make mistakes; they are
part of the learning process. It's important that you draw the correct
conclusions regarding the cause of your mistakes so you can learn from your
errors. You will learn what is life-or-death important and what is not, and
how to operate so that you minimize the risk of making mistakes with the
life-or-death stuff.
The cost of learning to fly
Right now you don't know how or where to go about learning to fly and you
don't know how much it will cost. I'll put it succinctly: It will cost
everything you have. As you learn and then as you fly throughout your life it
will demand that you be willing to think objectively and act honestly on the
conclusions you reach. Otherwise it will kill you, because aviation does not
forgive a pilot who will lie to him or herself about such things as the
weather and condition of the airplane.
It may come as a major surprise, but as a kid in high school you are in the
best position of your life to learn to fly. You are capable of learning
faster right now than at any time in your life. You do not yet have the
financial distractions of paying rent on an apartment, tuition in college,
supporting a family or the million and one other demands on your money that
you will have within five or six years. My friends in high school ... who
assured me they would learn to fly as soon as they had a little more money ...
never did. Something always got in the way. You can get a part-time job and
put the money toward learning to fly. Yes, it will be tough. I'm the first to
admit that minimum-wage for jobs such as kids get has not even come close to
keeping up with inflation, while the cost of flying has outpaced it. You can
wait tables, flip burgers, wash airplanes, work in a shirt laundry, park cars,
or set up a lawn-care business for your neighbors (you'd be surprised how many
of your neighbors would rather pay a responsible high school kid than a
commercial service). Yes, you'll have to work a lot of hours for each hour you
fly. I'm also aware there is less tolerance for kids these days than at any
time in recent history. There is also less tolerance for taking risks so there
are going to be a lot of people who think you're nuts for learning to fly.
That's fine — you've already shown me that your blood consists of something
more than dishwater, which is why you were at the airport. Let the rest of
them vegetate at the mall. I've come to believe that the future managers are
the kids who can be found at airports, the future managed are the ones at the
malls. Live, let the rest of them merely exist.
Where to learn
I
could also see you wondering where you go to learn to fly. I cannot give you
any definitive guidance because I do not know your airport at all well. Ask
around. Talk to pilots you meet at the airport. Find out if any of your
teachers at school are pilots. They often prove to be a tremendous help. Your
school system or local community college may have ground school classes at a
reasonable price. Look on the bulletin boards at the FBOs and flight schools
to see if anyone is selling a set of private pilot videos because they have
just finished the rating. Whether you are male or female, call the local Boy
Scout Council office and see if there is an Air Explorer Post. The Explorer
program is co-ed. There are not a lot of Air Explorer Posts, but if there is
one in your area there is a good chance it will provide you with some
assistance in getting started. Use the Internet and find out all of the sites
that have information on learning to fly that don't cost you anything. Beapilot.com
will give you some guidance. Join AVSIG on CompuServe and take advantage of
the guidance, support and technical assistance available on that technical
forum. Subscribe to aviation magazines using the discount cards in them or
read them in your community or school library. Read AVweb — it's free. If you
can afford it, join AOPA and see about their mentor program where an
experienced pilot helps you as you learn to fly.
I have to be brutally honest about one possible route to the sky even
though I know I'll get criticized by the knee-jerk types who defend it
unthinkingly: I'm hesitant to recommend joining the Civil Air Patrol cadet
program because the quality of the local squadrons varies so widely and there
are a significant number that are just awful. Too many kids join thinking it
is a route to learn to fly and find that all they do is wear uniforms, march
and salute adults who are frustrated General Pattons and wish to lord it over
those under them. Those kids waste the time they would otherwise use learning
about flying. Don't rule out CAP, just be extremely cautious about joining.
Visit a lot of squadron meetings as a guest before make a decision as to
whether it will take you toward your goals. CAP may turn out to be the best
thing you ever did if you luck out and get a good squadron. It can be an
excellent route to the military academies for college.
Even as a high school student, talk with the military recruiters and find
out what programs exist for flying for the military (including the Coast
Guard). There are college ROTC programs that provide some or all of your
tuition along with flight training if you meet the rather stringent medical
requirements. More than one friend of mine could not put together the money to
fly in high school or college but took advantage of an ROTC program to go to
college and then become a military pilot. Every single one of them speaks
highly of the experience and would do it again in a heartbeat. It doesn't mean
it was easy, but it allowed people who otherwise would not have been
financially able to accomplish their goals get an excellent education, learn
to fly, have some extraordinary experiences all over the world and then come
out of the service eminently employable. There are many, many colleges that
offer joint programs where you obtain an undergraduate degree and the
commercial, instrument and multi-engine ratings. Many have scholarships. Be
cautious of the "ab initio" programs that dress their students in
psuedo-airline-pilot uniforms, for too many of them teach only to the minimum
regulations and only what they perceive you need to know to get a job with an
airline. They have a reputation for turning out airplane drivers instead of
pilots. And never, ever forget that, historically, the most derogatory term
extant for a pilot is to be called an airplane driver. It says to the world
that such a person is incapable of truly flying an airplane, only of
robotically operating the machinery, sloppily herding it from one place to
another without any élan or panache whatsoever. Promise yourself right now
that you will take pride in the world of flight and never sink to the depth of
driving an airplane through the sky.
Yes, it's worth it
I
saw it in your eyes. You seek to become a pilot. Don't ever settle for
anything less.
Working day and night toward that goal you have it will probably be worth
all of the effort and money. It will pay off in satisfaction, adventure and a
unique perspective on the world. It may or may not pay you well monetarily.
Only a tiny percentage of pilots make a lot of money. If you go into flying
with money or a mere job as a goal, or treat learning to fly as some sort of
pedestrian technical education, you will be sadly disappointed because pursuit
of that job will distract you from truly learning to fly and becoming one with
an airplane. Ironically, that distraction may mean you don't get the job that
happens to pay very well because you were diverted from learning to fly well
in the first place.
You may end up with a life in aviation, but you don't have to make that
choice now or even in the next few years. If you do choose make your living in
aviation, you may sometimes regret it — just as you would have periodic
regrets if you became an investment banker. You may be disappointed sometimes
but you probably won't often be bored because a life in aviation can take you
anywhere ... to inches above the cotton fields of Louisiana, over the jungles
of Africa, to the edge of space, to late nights laced with kerosene smells and
early morning wake-up calls that tear at your very being. You will see and do
things very few other humans ever experience: sunrises so brilliant you will
cry at the sight if you have any poetry in your soul; double rainbows with the
shadow of your airplane in the center; the purple lightning of St. Elmo's Fire
reaching in long tentacles forward into the night from the nose of your jet
and other phantasms beyond belief. And, you will come to know that you are
slightly apart from the rest of humanity because of what you have seen and
done because the ground-bound can never understand, nor can you explain things
fully to someone at a cocktail party when you are asked, "why do you
fly?"
You don't know it yet, but there are people at the airport that want you to
succeed. Get to know as many as you can. Some will be helpful, some will not.
Some who are helpful will be knowledgeable and some won't. As with any
learning experience you have to sort out what is good and valuable and
practice it and determine what is not good and avoid it.
Yes, you can do it. Yes, it's going to be tough and there will be a lot of
times when you question whether you can do it. There will be times that you
scare yourself badly and wish you were anywhere but aloft. Regardless, I think
the work you have already put into reaching your goal, as well as the work you
are going to put into it, will be worth your while.
Oh, and do me a favor, please. Thirty years from now, when you are taxiing
out and see the kid on the bike by the airport fence, please shut down and go
talk to that kid. By then you will realize some of what aviation has given to
you. Talking to that kid will be a very good way of giving something back.
Your friend,
Rick Durden
See you next month.
Email this article
It's
another one of those late evenings here in the pilot's lounge. I'm here
because it's a place that is conducive to thinking. I returned from a trip a
couple of hours ago, put the airplane away and started to leave the airport
but turned around and came back here to the lounge where it was quiet. I've
been here alone for some time, thinking about something that happened before I
took off for the flight home from the small airport I had visited. I can't get
it out of my mind.
I
did something I'd never done before: I pulled over to a tiedown spot, shut
down, got out, walked up to the fence and spoke with the kid. I don't know how
long we talked, but we talked about airplanes, how they work and learning to
fly. Then, to my minor amazement, I heard myself asking whether the kid wanted
to take a brief flight. The "yes, please" came out immediately. I
put the kid in the left seat and gave a very brief introductory lesson just as
I had done scores of times for the people of all ages who had walked into
flight schools where I had worked and told me they wanted to learn to fly. We
flew maybe 15 minutes. After we landed we talked a little more. Then the kid
picked up the bicycle and rode off. The entire time I was aware of the kid's
eyes, blazing with energy and determination, missing nothing, trying with
every fiber to absorb everything.
