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Rick Durden |
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| About the Author ... |
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Rick Durden is a
practicing aviation attorney who holds an ATP Certificate, with a type rating
in the Cessna Citation, and Commercial privileges for gliders, free balloons
and single-engine seaplanes. He is also an instrument and multi-engine flight
instructor. Rick started flying when he was fifteen and became a flight
instructor during his freshman year of college.
He did a little of everything
in aviation to help pay for college and law school including flight
instruction, aerial application, and hauling freight. In the process of trying
to fly every old and interesting airplane he could, Rick has accumulated over
5,400 hours of flying time. In his law practice, Rick regularly represents
pilots, fixed base operators, overhaulers, and manufacturers. Prior to
starting his private practice, he was an attorney for Cessna in Wichita for
seven years.
He is a regular contributor to Aviation Consumer and AOPA Pilot
and teaches aerobatics in a 7KCAB Citabria in his spare time. Rick makes it
clear he is part owner of a corporation which owns a Piper Aztec — because,
having flown virtually every type of piston-engine airplane Cessna
manufactured from 1933 on, as well as all the turboprops and some of the jets,
he cannot bring himself to admit to actually owning a Piper.
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The
events of the eleventh of September affected all of us deeply. The Pilot's
Lounge at the virtual airport became jammed that day and has remained so with
pilots who have come together and try to sort out the myriad emotions that
each felt. The attacks, the subsequent groundings and then the national
suspicion of pilots shocked each of us. It helped to get together and talk.
The older pilots provided a degree of stability and direction to the younger
generation as the younger group struggled with a loss of innocence similar to
that their parents or grandparents had had in the First or Second World War. I
listened to the older pilots. Hearing of their experiences with the rampant
paranoia at the beginning of our country's involvement in each of those wars
was strangely reassuring. When they recalled that the government had pulled
the props off of general aviation airplanes to ground them following the Pearl
Harbor attack, it helped me understand that the current panic and subsequent
overreaction leading to the grounding of little airplanes is nothing new in
history and that maybe cooler, calmer heads will eventually prevail.
I listened to the anguish and anger of pilots of the Moslem faith who were
doubly injured by the attack. Not only were they victims of an attack on their
own country and its citizens, the attack was carried out by people who claimed
to be Moslems. That the attackers were at best cultists or, more probably, just
using religion as a pretense for an agenda of pure evil did not assuage the
pain of my friends. They were sickened that the peaceful teachings of their
ancient, honorable religion could be so defiled. Fortunately, grains of humor
did survive, as one commented, "those terrorists are undoubtedly very
surprised to find themselves in hell." Another said that our actions
against terror might get more world sympathy and support if not given
macho-sounding names, but rather one that is more insulting to the target,
maybe, he said, something along the lines of "Operation Trash Bin."
Pilots?
Yet, as the days went by, it seemed everyone in the Lounge was struggling
with the question of how pilots, yes, pilots, could have done such a
despicable act. We all knew of the kamikazes of Japan in World War II and we
had heard of desperate combat pilots of all nations who had run out of
ammunition and rammed an enemy airplane. But we could not get our arms around
the concept of cultists taking over airliners full of innocents and then using
the aircraft as missiles to crash into buildings also full of innocent human
beings.
Language hardly seemed capable of description of the heinousness, depravity
and utter indifference to the value of life shown by the act. That pilots
could do such a thing was staggering. That people who had sampled and savored
the world aloft, who had experienced the perfection of the sky, had looked
down on the majesty of nature and the handiwork of humans, could be so unmoved
by their experiences, so absolutely lacking in integrity, and so far from
having a soul, was unthinkable. The sinister behavior of those who used
airplanes to conduct a mission of malevolence overwhelmed us, as people who
equated airplanes with a deeply felt joy and who regularly donated our time
and our airplanes to help other human beings because of the abilities we had
as pilots.
As we listened to each other and read and learned and discussed things, we
began to understand that these were not "pilots" who had done such a
thing. We heard about the cultist "pilot" who had only desired
instruction on operating the aircraft while in flight; he had no interest in
takeoffs or landings. We learned that the terrorist who flew into the Pentagon
had planned the arrival
so poorly that he had had to make a wide circle because he was initially too
high. He couldn't plan a simple descent on a clear day when he could see
his target for miles. The second airplane to hit the World Trade Center was
operated by someone who couldn't even establish a crab angle to track straight
toward his massive objective. He had had to make a steep turn at the last
moment to hit something so huge and easy to spot as one of the twin towers,
even after the other was giving off a plume of smoke that told him the wind
direction and velocity.
Those were not pilots. They do not deserve the dignity associated with the
title. While we in the Lounge struggled to describe such creatures, we found
ourselves turning to a word that had a long tradition as the very worst
epithet in aviation. The word was used for years to describe the most horribly
incompetent, awful hamfists and throttle jockeys; a word so foul that it
dripped with contempt because it meant the person's aeronautical mind was so
woefully inadequate that it operated only in two dimensions. We dusted it off
and used it, because it was, and is, the right word for such life forms.
Driver. The cultists were nothing more than airplane drivers.
Airplane Drivers
Drivers move mechanical devices that never leave the surface of the earth.
At the most basic, drivers do not and often, cannot, think in the third
dimension. Buses have drivers. Cars have drivers. Drivers operate things that
are not only stuck firmly to the ground; they don't require any particular
effort or training to move them about.
Historically,
our language has given special names to those who operated vehicles and who
had made the effort to acquire a greater level of skill, judgment and
understanding in doing so. There were those who "drove" wagons drawn
by horses or oxen, but the experts, the professionals, the ones who were hired
to make sure the load got through, were called teamsters. Locomotives had
engineers. Cable cars had grip men and women. Even old-time elevators did not
have drivers, they had operators. Originally, pilots were the specialists who
knew harbors or particularly tricky bodies of water. The Merriam Webster over
on the shelf takes the word back to 1649 and refers to a pilot as a leader
over a difficult course. Pilots conned the steamboats on our rivers in the
19th century. Pilots were well respected for their knowledge, their skill and
their judgment. They were some of the earliest humans to have to think in the
third dimension as they commanded a vessel because they not only moved across
a body of water, that body itself moved up and down as the river level changed
or the tides flowed, thus changing itself dramatically. The nuances of each
vertical change and its impact on currents, snags and obstructions had to be
well understood by the pilot lest the ship suffer calamity. As aviation
terminology evolved from the nautical, those who ventured into the seas of air
above the ground were also given that most respected name, pilot.
In time, it became apparent that certain persons simply could not or would
not fly with any degree of élan. They moved their airplanes from one place to
another without any style, grace or flair. They took no pride in what they
did. They cratered runways with their landings, they could not seem to do more
than the minimum necessary to pass checkrides and were perfectly happy with
70%, the lowest score needed on a written examination. They had traveled into
the sky, but were unmoved by it. They had flown, but, for reasons forever
unknown, had not actually experienced flight. Because they "drove"
their airplanes, it just wasn't right to call them pilots. They were drivers,
somehow lacking pride, skill, grace and judgment, and not giving a damn.
In the last 20 years, authors who knew little of aviation sought synonyms
for "pilot" because they didn't want to use the same word time after
time. They innocently used "driver" without knowing its true
aeronautical meaning. The pilot community was and is small, so its objections
and attempts at correction went unheard. Other authors of popular novels
continued the practice, until eventually, sheer frequency of misuse once again
caused the meaning of a word to evolve. It also meant that many people
entering aviation and who had read the popular novels but never stopped to
think about the unique and vast difference between two and three-dimensional
travel, sometimes innocently called themselves drivers. Those who had been
flying for many years watched in quiet amusement, as folks said that they
"drove" Cessna 172s, or Barons or F-16s. Too often the irony was
that those who called themselves drivers actually were.
What Makes A Pilot?
Here in the Lounge, we sometimes get questions from students asking when or
how they will know whether they are truly pilots. Naturally, the question has
triggered a lot of discussion over the years. It's pretty well accepted that
the FAA's definition is inadequate. The practical test guides have standards
for the issuance of the various pilot certificates. As some of the Lounge
regulars frequently point out, Congress charged the FAA with the task of
establishing only "minimum" standards. Without being elitist in the
slightest, the disdain the regulars here in the Lounge have for any person who
is satisfied with just meeting the FAA's minimum standards is truly
monumental.
So
how does one distinguish a pilot from a driver? To put it in words of pilots I
respect, a pilot is one who is captivated by flight in all forms. He or she
goes aloft whenever possible and thinks of flight nearly constantly between
ascensions. The pilot sees the beauty of the sky, is always fascinated by it
and, in the end, is changed by it. A pilot has seen the perfection that is the
sky and seeks to reach it for him or herself. A pilot drinks in and sits in
awe of the magnificence of the world when viewed from the sky. A pilot has
seen grandeur of the skyline of the city as the sun first strikes it in the
morning, has looked in reverence at the wonder of a circular rainbow around
the shadow of her or his aircraft on a cloud, has laughed aloud at the pure
joy of breaking out on top of an overcast on a wintry day, has done all those
things, and hundreds more, small and large, and will never, ever be the same
for them. A pilot is set apart from the rest of humanity who has never seen
and thus never can quite understand the magic of what occurs in the sky. A
pilot shares the spiritual experience of flight with all other pilots, and is
physically and emotionally incapable of doing anything that would bring
dishonor on the world aloft, the people who go there to commune, or the
instrumentalities they use to rise off of the ground.
How do you know if you are a pilot? Take time to just look around you at
others and think about who you are. You have seen pilots. You've watched
pilots come down final, close the throttle and flare the airplane, holding it
off the runway until flying speed has all but dissipated, only then letting
the main gear begin to roll; and you've watched drivers come down final, never
closing the throttle, but pitch up to some attitude that they've been told to
hold, which they do, mechanically, with power, eating up runway, until the
wheels hit the ground while still well above stall speed, at which time they
finally close the throttle as the smell of burning rubber mixes with that of
overheated brakes.
A
driver merely causes a mechanical assemblage of parts to move from one place
to another. If it's an airplane, it is shoved through the air, without a shred
of elegance, until a landing takes place. The driver has no feelings for and
cares nothing about the airplane. It is only a machine used to accomplish some
goal be it going someplace or ramming a building full of innocents. It has no
meaning beyond being a rather complicated tool. The driver looks down at the
ground to find a checkpoint, never seeing any art in the work of humans. The
driver looks at the horizon to check that the wings are level without ever
seeing the splendor of the natural world. The driver doesn't notice that there
is a double rainbow off to the left. Nor does the driver care.
Sadly, one sees drivers in all walks of aviation. Have you ever watched an
airplane cringe as its pilot approached? The airplane knows what is coming; a
driver is going to herd it through the air, squeeze the yoke seemingly in
hopes of getting juice from the plastic, thrash the controls around as if in a
bad John Wayne movie and eventually just barely avoid landing on the nosewheel.
After the flight, drivers walk away from the airplane without so much as a
backward glance or a thought about the miracle that a collection of parts that
weigh more than the air could possibly rise of the ground and fly. One
occasionally even sees drivers employed by airlines. They are the ones who
care only about their seniority number or the quality of the crew meals or
whether they can make the down payment on the bigger boat this month, but
never about ride they give passengers nor making those passengers feel at ease
when something a little out of the ordinary happens.
Are you are truly a pilot? There are time-honored ways of knowing. Rest
assured, the yardstick is not one that measures flying time, because flying
time does not tell anything about the soul of a person. There are 30-hour
pilots and 10,000-hour drivers.
Have You? Do You? Can You?
Have you ever gotten up before dawn and gone to the airport, not to go
someplace, but just so that you could be aloft to watch the sunrise? If so,
there is some poetry in your soul, and a definite potential that you truly are
a pilot. Do you sometimes close the throttle completely on downwind and land
on a spot you selected ahead of time? Even in a twin? Can you do a forward
slip all the way into the flare before you kick the airplane straight and
touch down? Can you feel what the airplane is telling you all of the time, so
that if you stall, it is because you meant to do so? Do you fly downwind until
the runway is 45 degrees behind your shoulder before you turn base, as you did
when you were a brand new student pilot, or do you turn base while still in
the same county as the airport, knowing you can make the runway if the engine
quits and showing respect for the pilot on downwind behind you? Do you care
for someone else's airplane as if it were yours when flying it, never, ever
uttering, "It's just a rental"? When you start the engine, do you
know what is behind so you do not blow trash all over someone else's paint
job? Do you make certain your rpm never exceeds 1,000 on start because you
know your engine and want it to last as long as possible, even if it is not
your airplane? And to slow down while taxiing do you close the throttle
completely, first, or just ride the brakes? Do you know and take advantage of
the fact that when flying an airplane with a constant speed propeller that the
slower you turn the prop the more efficient and quiet it is? Do you know how
to lean the mixture to get the most from a gallon of gasoline and do you do it
every single time that you are flying level, no matter what the altitude? And
do you do your best to fly quietly so as not to disturb those you are flying
over and who don't happen to have the good fortune to be in the sky right
then? If yes, there is hope for you.
While
in flight are you aware of others around you, whether in an airplane or on the
ground, and do you fly your airplane to show respect for them?
Do you look forward to landing on grass runways any time you can? Can you
hold your altitude within 50 feet as a routine and do you do it because it is
the right thing to do, knowing deep inside that someday it really is going to
matter? Can you hold your airspeed within 5 knots on landing approach even if
the airspeed indicator is covered up? Do you know your airplane well enough to
put the nose in the right place on climb out to get Vy and can you do it with
a broken airspeed indicator?
Have you ever driven more than an hour just to take a ride in an
open-cockpit airplane? Have you ever taken dual in a type of aircraft that you
know you cannot afford to fly very often just because you wanted to fly it, be
it a balloon or helicopter or on skis or floats or just a different type of
airplane? Have you ever gotten a rating that you will probably never use again
just because it meant you would learn more about flying or that you had always
dreamed of flying that kind of airplane? Do you disdain the wearing of
jumpsuits and large, ornamental wings and patches and pins that make you a
walking billboard, but rather, are you comfortable in yourself and know that
your skills and judgment are enough advertisement of you as a pilot? Do you
plot and scheme so that when you take people who trust you into the sky that
the flight will be as smooth and serene as possible with maximum scenic value
so that you can turn them into ambassadors for the thing you love?
The worst of the wagon drivers of old mercilessly whipped their horses and
oxen because they did not bother to learn how to get the best from their
animals. Do you flog your airplane through the sky or do you know all of the
speeds for your airplane and when to use each one? Do you only touch the
controls with your fingertips, guiding your airplane with subtle pressures to
get it to go where you desire? Do you always know where it is you want the
airplane to go, and are you willing to urge it in that direction any time it
gets so much as a degree off the course you have selected?
Have
you ever flown a Cub on a soft summer evening and landed on a grass runway and
smelled the clover as the rolling tires released its scent? After seeing a
particularly lovely sunset, have you ever climbed three or four thousand feet
so that you could enjoy it again? Do you know the sensuous pleasure of flight
on a moonlight night, and do you sometimes turn down the instrument lights as
far as you can so that you can drink in the beauty of the nighttime world? Do
you still sometimes fly kites on windy days? Can you do a straight-ahead loop
or an aileron roll without falling out of either one? Can you do a three-turn
spin and recover on the heading you chose beforehand? Can you make a crosswind
takeoff and landing in a tailwheel airplane and never have the outcomes of
each seriously in doubt?
Can you read the signs of foul weather approaching, and thus have your
airplane securely on the ground when it strikes? Can you look at a passenger
who desperately wants to get home and say "no" because the weather
is below your personal minima? Are you aware of the weather, even when there
is no prospect of flight in the immediate future? Do you look at the sky
several times each day, even in the midst of the tall buildings of a city? Do
you know enough to avoid venturing into deteriorating weather when trying to
fly visually so that you will never join the legion of drivers who have
received their final verdict: obituaries that read "attempted to continue
VFR into IMC conditions"? Do you respect the magnitude of storms and
regard them as manifestations of nature's fury, to be viewed, and enjoyed,
either from the ground or, if aloft, from afar?
Do you ever sit for a while in the airplane or helicopter or glider once
the flight is done to think about your flight and how very lucky you are to be
able to fly? Do you ever just sit and listen to the airplane talk to you just
a little longer, while there is still the sensation and tactile memory of
flight in your hands and body, for those last moments before the aircraft
again becomes a mechanical device? And afterward, do you ever find yourself
walking slowly as you leave the aircraft because you don't want to sever that
bond you just had with the sky? And do you ever stop, turn around, look at the
airplane and quietly say "thank you"?
Capabilities
If you have done and can do, or seek to do, these things, and if you seek
excellence and further learning and insight every time you fly, there is a
good probability that you are a pilot and not a driver.
As we in the Lounge talked more about pilots and drivers and the events of
the eleventh of September, we came to realize that pilots are incapable of the
foul deeds carried out in New York and Virginia. Pilots did not kill those
innocent people. Drivers did.
See you next month.
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