FEAR OF FLYING

by Clayton Davis

TRUSTING THE AIRPLANE

Fear of flying is not unique. People very likely fear anything they never experienced before. Being up high can freeze you solid with fear, like rock climbing. It's that ever-present knowledge that gravity is still working and will concentrate on your innocent body unless there is a structure between you and the ground. But you have to trust the structure. After a day of rock climbing with the instructor, you would feel differently about the sport.

You won't fear flying after you understand more about airplanes and pilots. Right now you're in the same place early riders of trains were. You only know they are noisy, go fast and sometimes make the evening news.

Maybe you've taken a trip on the airlines. Maybe not, but anyhow, your first ride in a small airplane is something else. First there is the sound, and two other things.

When the engine starts you think it sounds somewhere between a motorcycle and a lawnmower engine. That's because they're all air-cooled, no radiator. No anti-freeze to check. And you may think it is loud, perhaps really loud.

As you begin your first takeoff, you have a sensation of speed. In fact, you have to move faster than the normal highway speed limit of fifty-five. You get up to around seventy or eighty miles an hour, then up comes the nose.

But the sensation of speed soon disappears. You seem to be hanging there, things on the ground getting smaller. Then when you make that first turn to leave the traffic pattern, it's like the earth tilted. There, out the window, you can see the ground.

There are no frightening lurches, nothing like a roller coaster. But what a view! You can see forever. Houses and cars, people and things, they look like little crawling toys.

All your apprehension and fear of the unknown disappears as you begin to control the airplane. It's a magic carpet. You could just point it anywhere and there's where you'd go.

You can't believe it. Your first lesson is over. That couldn't have been an hour. But, alas, yes it was. Time really goes by when you're having fun.

Like our reference to the sport of rock climbing, there is a structure between you and the ground when you're up in an airplane. How does it work to keep you safely way up there? It's easy. Air does it, the way it pushes. Air pushes on you all the time, fourteen pounds upon every square inch of your body. If it pushed more on the bottom of anything, or less on the top, that object would fly, or go through the air.

Let's think about that. Air is pushing on everything all at once, everywhere. Look at a playing card. Hold it up. It is about three by four inches. That's twelve inches of square space being pushed on by air. Fourteen pounds times twelve is one hundred and sixty eight pounds, on both sides of the card.

Drop the card. It falls. Make air push more on the bottom and the card will rise. Sure, it will.

Go out to the airport and look at an airplane wing. It looks more flat on the bottom, and curved on the top. The front of the wing is round, much larger than the rear, which comes to a sharp edge.

Take a tape measure and find out how far it is from front to back on the bottom of the wing. Say it is about three feet. The top will curve and measure more than three feet from front to rear.

As the wing goes forward, it pushes air up and down. The part moving along the bottom wants to join the air moving over the top of the wing. You measured the wing and know air over the top goes a greater distance.

Air over the top goes farther and faster than the air along the bottom of the wing. Going faster, it pushes down less than fourteen pounds per square inch.

Air moving along the bottom is still pushing fourteen pounds every square inch. Remember what we said at the beginning, about pushing more on the bottom of something. That object would fly, or go through the air.

PILOT QUALIFICATIONS

How about the pilot training and certification process? In railroading days the engineer was a hero-figure and you might well wonder who is that up front making your airplane go where it should.

The Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) is the government agency making sure your pilot is qualified. How do they do that? Pilot certification is based on accumulated experience.

The FAA issues certificates authorizing people to conduct operations in airplanes, helicopters, gliders, balloons, and probably anything else that will fly. Listed under the requirements are a certain number of hours. All the hours are cumulative, from the first lesson. For example, the requirement for ten night takeoffs and landings in the Commercial Certificate was satisfied when you did them for the Private Pilot requirements.

Here are the requirements for different pilots. A student pilot must be sixteen years old to fly solo and have a Third Class medical certificate. No, that doesn't mean the pilot is any less healthy than everyone else. It means the medical certificate need not be renewed as often as Second Class and First Class.

A Private Pilot must be seventeen years old, have a Third Class medical certificate, plus forty hours flying experience.

Next comes the Commercial Pilot certificate, people who can and may be the pilot in the right seat of your commercial airliner. That person must be eighteen years old and have a Second Class medical certificate. Two hundred hours flying experience is the minimum requirement to be a Commercial Pilot, who can also be rated as a Flight Instructor and give lessons.

Still, you want to know what kind of pilot is the captain up front in your airliner. That will be an Airline Transport Pilot who is at least twenty-three years old with a First Class medical certificate and fifteen hundred hours flying experience.

Would any of these minimally qualified pilots be flying your airplane? Not very likely. Ask any pilot you know and the answer is the same. It is a long hard process, getting a job with the airlines.

DIFFERENT KINDS OF PILOTS

Let's look at the habit patterns of some pilots with very little flying time in their logbooks. You'll find that out when you're Flight Instructing. Every pilot is given a flight check by an instructor every two years. It is called the Biennial Flight Review. It adds a measure of safety.

He had flown along nicely for two years. Then, suddenly, without warning, his Biennial Flight Review was due. It's about as welcome as Income Tax time, or a dental appointment. Sure, you can fly without it. There are some drawbacks, however. Your insurance policy is no longer any good. Plus one other thing, the Federal Aviation Administration will probably put you on their list of Most Watched Pilots. Make them mad and you're in a heap-o-trouble. Like dental appointments and taxes, Biennial Flight Reviews come due.

There are two quick ways to accomplish the Biennial Flight Review. Go fly with an instructor, or find an instructor willing to sign your flight log over a cup of coffee, without flying with you. It all depends on how well he knows you. That "coffee shop sign-off" is highly illegal and frowned upon by the Good Guys.

The long, hard way is to train for another rating, perhaps the Commercial Pilot certificate. You'd be good for another two years. Even Airline Transport Pilots get a Biennial Flight Review. Everybody does it.

I once was a flight instructor at the Fort Meade Flying Club, midway between Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D. C. Here is an interesting story about one Biennial Flight Review candidate, a dentist named Bill Harrison. Dr. Harrison was also a Captain in the U.S. Naval Reserves.

He honestly wanted to be reviewed. You know the type. They study the night before mid-term exams and make straight-A's, graduate top of their class, become world leaders.

"Hi. I'm your next appointment. My name's Bill. What's this Biennial Flight Review thing all about?" asked a slender man in an aviator's jacket. He was wearing the neatest handlebar moustache I had ever seen.

"The FAA would like all pilots to ride with an instructor every two years," I replied. His moustache curved exactly in the shape of handlebars, motorcycle handlebars.

"Who gives instructors a ride?" That seemed like a reasonable request.

"Other instructors, or the FAA," I told him.

"What kind of flying does a pilot have to do during the biennial, something fancy?"

"How many kinds are there?"

"Well, you know, stalls and all that stuff."

"If you want me to ride with you, we should talk about it first," I suggested.

"I've been worried about this Biennial Flight Review since I scheduled it," he admitted.

"Well, I like to sort of get acquainted with the candidate before we go fly," I reassured him.

"So you'll know how to torture him?" He asked, smiling.

"Not so. We both like airplanes or we wouldn't be standing here. Why else come to the airport?"

"I see your point. My father was a Naval Aviator. He wanted me to go to flight school."

"Why didn't you? What are you doing when you aren't hanging out at airports?"

"I'm a Dentist."

"That's interesting." It was, because my teeth were due for a checkup. Perhaps I'd call him later,

I thought.

After looking through his log book, I began, "I see you make a long cross-country flight about

twice a month."

"I also practice landings once or twice a week too," he offered.

"Do you stop and make circles in the sky? And fly slow a little bit, to remember how it feels?"

"Those things weren't just for the Private Pilot flight test?"

"Weight and Balance?" I asked.

"Every flight?"

"Have you used a pencil to do a Weight and Balance calculation since your flight test?" I

wondered.

"No," he admitted and waited for me to continue.

"How much fuel do we carry?"

"Full?"

"Not every time. Remember -- fuel to destination, plus forty-five minutes reserve?"

"Flying with empty tanks is difficult," he admitted.

Good answer, then I got to the point about levels of pilot experience.

"Bill, I believe there are three critical points in a pilot's career. At the one-hundred hour

experience level, the five-hundred hour, and two-thousand hour point."

"That's interesting," he said, "because I have nearly five hundred hours logged. Am I dangerous

yet?"

"After about a hundred hours flying time," I continued, "an airman is beginning to feel at home in

the airplane. He decides to try something beyond what his instructor taught him. One case I

remember, a young man circled his friend's house and got lower and slower, until finally the stall

warning sounded."

"Must have been interesting?"

"It was. He immediately leveled the wings, added full power and climbed out of there. Then he

reviewed all he had been taught about low-level turns, remembering his instructor's advice, about

keeping one eye on the airspeed."

"I am nearing the point where I get my five-hundred hour scary experience?"

"That usually happens when the pilot starts being paid for flying. He thinks it's great. Someone

is actually paying him to do something he thoroughly enjoys. On the one hand, the one-hundred

hour pilot forgot what he'd been taught. The five-hundred hour type thinks he can make up some

rules just for himself."

"Such as?" Bill asked.

"Pushing too close to bad weather. Trying to land and takeoff with extremely strong cross-

winds."

"How about the third level, the two-thousand hour pilot?" Bill asked.

"He's working his first real job, probably night freight. I know a pilot who was hauling small

packages at night between Richmond, Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. The plane was

serviced and fueled, the flight plans were filed by the company, every night the same routine --

until the night he was asked to make an additional run, back-tracking via Richmond to Baltimore."

"What happened?" Bill asked.

"He almost had enough fuel to make the runway at Richmond," I smiled. "He did an excellent off-airport landing with no injuries or damage. Fatigue got him. He forgot to refuel."

AIRLINE CHIEF PILOTS

Passengers on airliners have a very important person between them and pilots with bad habits. It is the Chief Pilot. We shall trace the typical career path of young pilots who must be interviewed by this hero among all airline crews.

Wearing the uniform at United, Delta, or American Airlines, with four stripes on the sleeve. That is the dream. Respect in air terminals 'round the world, especially in places you see in the movies, that is the reward.

Mandatory crew rest in Paris? Being able to bid a route you like, month after month, domiciled in the neighborhood where you spent your early years?

Pay your dues, you bird men and bird ladies. All pilots fly low and slow during the years they are logging time in their very first log book.

How neat that log book looks. The entries are precise and legible. Notice how hastily they are scrawled from the date when there are two-hundred hours total flying time.

That is when bird men, and ladies, can be qualified for the Commercial Pilot certificate. The public thinks "commercial" flying means someone bought a ticket and the machine made a loud noise going down the runway.

Two hundred hours and a Commercial certificate only mean the pilot is qualified to become a Flight Instructor. Many people spend their time between two hundred and seven hundred hours giving lessons, usually near where they themselves learned to fly.

How about the organized flight schools? Florida and Saint Louis have some schools known world-wide. What chance do the graduates have of finding a job where they will wear uniforms and dress like the people in the school's publicity photographs? One out of ten might be close.

What about military aviators? They log about sixteen hundred hours flying time during their first tenure of service. Some of that may have been spent trying to shoot down other airplanes, or hunting hostile forces. Some may have flown heavy airplanes. That might make entry into the scheduled airlines easier.

Unless the former military aviator has den-brothers roosting safely someplace in the major airlines, the former pilot of military airplanes joins a group of very hungry, general-aviation airmen, and ladies.

The Chief Pilot will read a thousand resumes over a ten year period. What does he look for in resumes? Total time is first. Two thousand hours of flying time, that's a nice round number. On the other hand, having ten thousand hours raises questions. Why are you changing jobs?

Having logged time in the airplanes used by your new company helps greatly. Why? Because airline insurance policies are written with that in mind. It also makes training and transition quick and easier.

What are the chances? Depends on the opportunity in front of you. If you are smart, good- looking, and rich, oh well, those three will make you a success anyplace. To begin, let's start with smart. Your native wit, and a very large measure of divine intervention help, some are convinced.

Start at a place where someone knows someone. Follow any lead any of your friends give you. It is comforting to know the candidate has flown with other pilots the Chief Pilot knows and trusts. This impresses him more than well-written resumes, even when printed on expensive parchment.

Then there is dedication. What does that mean? Does the candidate begin the interview by asking how much the job pays?

Aviation is an apprenticeship. It is a fact that there are fewer competent general aviation pilots in a given local flying area than there are licensed medical practitioners in the same zip codes. The term "general aviation pilots" means all those not wearing the uniform of the scheduled airlines.

The FAA database shows about 600,000 people hold pilot certificates, of all kinds, student through Airline Transport Pilot. That is not many. It is very likely all of them knows someone who knows the others, all through the circle.

The Chief Pilot may ask this question, does the candidate want to fly, or get rich? The ambition to get rich flying might be slightly misplaced. Like all beautiful arts, love of the profession should be uppermost a pilot's mind.

GENERAL AVIATION PILOTS GAINING FLYING EXPERIENCE

Pretty soon a young aviator's reputation precedes him, or her. Will he, or she, answer the beeper in the middle of the night, in a blinding rainstorm? Is this aviator consistent and credible?

The time between about seven hundred hours and two thousand flying hours a general aviation pilot will work many nights rescuing dirty boxes and light freight. Then, depending on charm and good looks, perhaps divine intervention, along comes the chance to haul paying passengers. Out they go, early in the morning, piloting a flying taxicab called Air Charter. Back they come, late in the evening.

When do people in the business world want to travel? They must necessarily start early in the morning and return home late in the evening. Why? Because they want to be where they are going in time to put in a full day's work at the place they are visiting, that is why.

Where do Air Taxi pilots fly to? That answer is easy. Where the airlines do not visit, that is where they go. Does that mean very small airports in the hills? Yes it does. The pilot's splendid, well-rounded bottom will be molded flat by the marginal furniture at some small airport not visited by the airlines. He, or she, will sit in a tiny waiting room, eating out-of-date junk food from a very small vending machine.

Be of strong physical constitution, all of you who would be aviators. Be able to digest anything you can chew. Visit the maintenance hangar. See torn apart every example of flying equipment the local economy supports. You will smell crop-dusters sitting in their bare bones. Hear legends about local flying heroes. See the richest young man in town drive up in an automobile with a name you are unable to spell.

Watch this rich young man mount a small fast airplane that can shoot down anything in the local training area. When he has refueled his small plane and is rubbing it carefully with a very clean towel, ask him how far in aviation he hopes to go. He is there. He is a legend at his own airport.

Then you will begin to think about the weather you know is waiting for you on the way back to home base. Bad weather waits until sundown, unless it is fog or evil snow. That comes early in the morning.

Now we may consider the rites of passage for young pilots. There are three hurdles. Number one is early, when the aviator reaches one hundred hours. No longer awed by flight, this pilot peeks down at the ground for the first time. What? How nice this is. Here I am, master of the sky. This is when all of the instructor's teaching is forgotten. All of that good advice was just for training purposes anyway, just to get the aviator past the dreaded Flight Test. Wasn't it?

This one-hundred-hour pilot may want to circle low over some cherished landmark. His own home? Forgetting all sound advice, he allows his plane to get slower and slower. Hopefully the airplane will shudder and tremble enough to get this pilot to apply full power and level the wings.

Next comes the five-hundred-hour pilot. This one is probably doing something with the Commercial certificate, such as towing banners, or flying skydivers. Midway through the month of June, this young aviator begins to think the rules are for fools, thinks conditions can be pushed. One day this pilot finds a cross-wind beyond anything the airplane's designers had expected. Perhaps the pilot thinks dark clouds were something only to be remembered for the Written Test.

Surviving these two scares, and continuing to write time in the log book, our aviator has found employment at the first meaningful job in a long and happy career. He, or she, is receiving a printed check at regular intervals. The aviator feels secure. The logbook has over two thousand hours in it.

The route to be flown night after night is well-known. Ground support is there. The airplane is fueled, handled, and serviced by dedicated personnel who have great respect and admiration for the pilot.

Then one dark night when he calls the dispatcher to report landing time, cargo weight, and estimated departure time, the news is gently given. An extra section must be flown. No, it will not violate duty time. No, it will not keep him out too late. Over the same boring route, our pilot must back-track and fly another dirty box.

Remember the aviator's ground handlers serviced the plane? They fueled it and moved it around on the ground, in and out of hangars. They did everything for the machine. This airplane's fuel load at each stop was bought and paid for by the company. The pilot only had to sign for it. Alas, an extra box of cargo and the need to retrace part of the original route, this was not in the program.

Returning home, this airplane traveled almost to the end of the runway at home base, empty, with no cargo, and ran out of gas. It was being flown by one very tired and unhappy pilot.

Our brave bird man made a wonderful off-airport landing. Ground handlers expertly removed the wings and loaded the airplane upon a flatbed truck the next day. The wings were reassembled onto the airplane just the way the engineers expected them to fit.

One very embarrassed pilot told his story at a hearing in the local Federal Aviation Administration office. He is still flying today, a very wise bird man. It could as easily have been a bird lady.

The two thousand-hour rite-of-passage tests an aviator's ability to function with a heavy load of boredom and fatigue. Whatever habit patterns have been laid down in the pilot's neural pathways continue to function, despite fatigue and boredom.

Pilots must use the checklist. Develop patterns that work, even when tired enough to fall asleep and the radio has to wake you up for a frequency change, twice. If they listen to wiser and older owls, they will be able to fly with the eagles. Fly anything, anyplace, anytime, anyhow, and some wise old owl will say the word to them, someday soon.

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL

Now we have a better idea about which of those 600,000 certified pilots might be at the controls of the next airliner you see departing the airport. But you must realize, they do not simply charge down the runway and roar off into the atmosphere, free to go any direction they choose.

From the time an airplane starts engines until it is cruising happily at a flight level, the crew is in constant communication with controllers. First they copy a clearance, that set of instructions that says, "go here, at this altitude, then go this way, at another altitude."

When it is time to push back from the gate, the flight attendants having settled everyone down and stowed the carry-on baggage, the crew calls Ground Control. "Ready to taxi," they say.

At the runway, when everything in the cockpit is ready, "You're cleared for takeoff," the Control Tower tells them. Off the end of the runway, climbing on the initial heading, "Contact Departure Control," comes the command.

"Hello, Departure. This is . . . (whichever flight number)," the crew makes contact with a radar operator. Local radar is called Departure Control and Arrival Control.

Departure Control transfers the airplane to a larger radar center that controls several states. "Hello, Center. This is . . . (whichever flight number). With you, climbing to (whichever altitude assigned)," the crew reports in.

You hardly ever see other airplanes away from the airport while on your way someplace. That's because of mandatory separation, ahead, sideways, up and down. Ahead of you the other airplane will be five miles or more. Same on either side. Altitudes are assigned to provide two thousand feet separation at airliner altitudes.

TURBULENCE

Air Traffic controllers are the pilot's best friend, especially when an altitude change or directional change are necessary to avoid turbulence. Every effort is made to make a comfortable flight for the airliner. But sometimes things get crowed and they can't give your crew the altitude or heading requested.

Modern airliners are built as strong as old-fashioned brick outhouses, sturdy enough to fly through turbulence, flexing and bending as necessary. Crew and passengers are not that tough. They bounce off walls and ceilings, breaking things, sometimes bones and such.

Let's look at what causes turbulence. A thermal is what pilots call rising air currents. Think of it this way. A balloon full of hot air rises, because hot air is lighter than cold air. When you heat air (or anything else) it expands. So a balloon full of hot air contains less air than a balloon of the same size full of cold air. Thus it weighs less than the air it displaces, and like a cork under water, which weighs less than the water it displaces, it will tend to rise.

You see evidence of these rising air currents in every puffy, summertime cloud gracing the beauty of your lovely sky. Pilots tend to avoid flying directly through the bigger, more dangerous clouds out there, too much turbulence.

A pilot will choose never to fly through clouds that are either black or light green. And they even creep carefully through the white, benign variety. Green clouds get their color because light refracts through ice. Black ones get that way because water droplets stop light.

Where do you find green clouds? In the upper third of cumulonimbus monsters, those tall, aggressive things that pour heavy rain and sometimes hail. In the first place your pilot will have requested a change of direction from Air Traffic Control long before you would be close enough to see the light green ice inside clouds. It is hail, really bad, vicious stuff.

Where does hail begin? As the nice white, friendly-looking cumulus clouds are building, their tops eventually reach the freezing level. When that happens, they go ballistic and attain two-thousand feet per minute upward mobility. Now that's turbulence. Something your pilot will avoid by requesting a change of direction.

There is a clue that the innocent cumulus cloud is going ballistic. A small halo of freeze-dried moisture appears as a gossamer veil atop the building cumulus the instant it punches through the freezing level. The veil is soon swallowed by the rapidly rising cloud. Look quickly or you'll miss it. Keep scanning along the freezing level and you'll find more of them. It happens to every cloud that dares rise that high in life. How does your pilot find the freezing level? By looking at the Outside Air Temperature gauge. The inside ring is notched in two-degrees-Centigrade increments. Say it is three notches warmer than zero-degrees Centigrade. The pilot's view should be directed at an altitude three thousand feet above your airplane. And remember, if the crew has to wade through clouds with tops above the freezing level, they will sternly advise everyone to fasten seat belts, please.

Above thirty thousand feet those innocent ice crystals are now big enough to refract light. Your pilot will escape from that region of wondrous beauty and keep your airplane far, far away from it.

So, next time your flight crew says, "Ladies and gentlemen, the Captain has turned on the Fasten Seat Belt sign," don't be alarmed. You now know why.

YOU, THE PASSENGER

Go on. Buy a ticket. Sure, airplanes are sometimes noisy and a little strange. But your flight crew is not putting on an act. When they tell you, "Ladies and gentlemen. This is all part of the routine," believe them. They are people just like you, not superhuman daredevils trying to scare innocent passengers.

Relax. Enjoy the ride. Look down at all those miserable automobiles. Ring for another cup of coffee. You've earned it!

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