One of the occupational hazards of being an aviation writer is that you sometimes run into pilots who want to show you what their airplane can do . . . right up to the ragged edge of the envelope. And they're almost always going to show you regardless of whether you want to go along for the ride or not. In fact, I'm tempted to say that not wanting to go along with it is a big draw for these guys. The end result can be terrifying. And while I wish I could say that I could spot these pilots a mile off, there are usually few clues to their predilections until you hear that most dreaded cockpit phrase, "Watch this."
I've survived these experiences, but I'd have preferred to have skipped them altogether. One time I was flying with a pilot friend in a buddy's 185 when we crested a ridge. He immediately and without prior notice stuffed the nose down and flew us down the near vertical ravine at breakneck speed, 100-foot pinion pines rising above us and blurring past on either side as I hung on and hoped for a happy outcome. When we emerged from the ravine to level flight, my friend asked, "Wasn't that fun?" Except for the part where I was convinced I was going to die, yeah, it was a hoot.
Another time a different aviation buddy, again without warning--this type is big on the "without warning" part--on departure in an old Navion and still about 500 feet agl, suddenly pitched the nose up and proceeded to roll the airplane in the saddle between two desert hills. He, also, was curious to know if it was fun for me. Truth be told, not so much.
Those are, sadly, not the worst experiences I've had with showoff pilots. I've been on a few extended play airborne renditions of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, and in each case I've asked out loud for my pilot companion to stop it, and in each case he declined. They were, it was clear, convinced that I was simply having too much fun to stop now.
It wasn't that these guys were bad pilots in the stick and rudder sense. Quite the opposite. In every case they were remarkable flyers, experienced, knowledgeable and skilled at making the airplane do what they wanted it to do.
All of them, to the best of my knowledge, are also still alive, so they’ve defied the odds in that regard. And their continued survival does jibe with their sense of themselves, that they will, you see, always be alive. They believe to their core that when they buzz that farmhouse or fly under those power lines, that they're going to be just fine. Which is why, I guess, they have little compunction about taking risks with other people's lives. After all, since nothing is ever going to happen, why bother worrying?
The accident statistics beg to differ. Not only might something happen. The chances of that deadly something happening while maneuvering at high speed and low level are hugely out of proportion to what we typically regard as normal flight.
Not that these pilots are stupid. Most would agree with the numbers, but it's just that the statistics don’t apply to them. It’s those other pilots, the ones who aren't as skilled, as sharp or as special as they are, who come to harm.
And I think they really believe it. Believe it right up until that last maneuver, when that paper-thin margin of error suddenly vanishes, and it's too late.
I wonder if in that last moment, as they're uttering or screaming what the NTSB unofficially refers to as "the magic word," if at that last moment before everything goes Tony Soprano black, if they finally reconsider their invulnerability and wish with their last wish that they'd thought it through a little sooner.
You know what? Probably not.
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Submitted by kymrbill on August 05, 2010.
Speaks the absolute truth! In my flying heyday, I took 54 people for their first-ever light plane ride. In every case I had two absolute rules: Explain EVERYTHING I was going to do before I did it, and ASK if the passenger wanted to do anything more aggressive like steep turns or a zero-G arc. I would also ask if they wanted to experience "flying" the plane, never just taking my hands off the yoke and saying "You fly it." If I'm fortunate to get back into active flying again, I hope to introduce even more folks to the joys of wind beneath their wings.
Submitted by kkrumm on August 05, 2010.
I had a friend who I took for his very first ride in an airplane. I made sure to explain all of the procedures and let him in on all the "secret" stuff we pilots do to keep the plane airborne. After a few minutes I invited him to fly the plane and showed him how all the controls affected the attitude of the plane. He flew for about 30 minutes and when we returned to land he told all our friends how I had tried to kill him by "making him fly the plane"! Glad I didn't show him a stall or steep turn. Or maybe not....
Submitted by robert goyer on August 05, 2010.
Nicely said. I was not a newbie, so maybe that made these folks feel as though there was even more reason to give me a ride I wouldn't soon forget. When I give first rides, I also explain everything. Even when it's not a first time, it never hurts to explain why I'm doing something. The other day on our way home from Oshkosh in the Cirrus,as I was running up the airplane I explained to our 12-year-old what I was doing. He waited patiently and then replied, "I know, Dad." I took that as a compliment.
Submitted by Barry Dardis on August 05, 2010.
In 1975 I had the opertunity to take Jim Hartz of the Today Show on a flight along the Rocky Mountain front in Montana. As I do with all new passengers I explained all the procedures and what to expect as we went along. All turns were standard rate and no surprises. He was most apreciative and said so. I then realized he was an expert reporter on areo space issues, was the 1st civilian to ride in a F-106. He had flown with some of the best bush pilots in the world. I was a little embarassed to say the least. He did say he didn't like supprises and really enjoyed the flight.
Submitted by Hogey74 on August 06, 2010.
Nice article. You have reminded me a bit of something psychologists call the "Third Person Effect". It is interesting by itself but where I think the underlying principle might apply is in the trap of thinking that bad stuff could only happen to other people much less wise and profficient than yourself - the supposed third person.
Submitted by john mercadante on August 08, 2010.
What gets me is the old stand by, "well at least he was doing what he loved when he died." No, a few minutes before he died he was doing what he loved, and probably a few seconds before he died he wished he was on the ground.
Submitted by robert goyer on August 09, 2010.
I know! I always hate that old "doing what he loved" line.
Flying is what we love. Crashing, not so much.
Submitted by john mercadante on August 09, 2010.
Sorry to get off the subject of your article, but I can't resist. The other statement made by the popular press that always gets me is, "The pilot was a hero to the end when he bravely steered his crippled aircraft away from the school." Yes, I am sure that most pilots would do what they can to avoid injury to those on the ground, but they probablly steer away from the school, or other large obstruction, because they picked something a bit more attractive to hit other than a brick wall.
Submitted by 24fps on August 14, 2010.
There's a wonderful speech near the beginning of John Frankenheimer's famous auto racing movie, Grand Prix, in which a veteran driver explains his belief that in order to do something very dangerous, a certain lack of imagination was required. If one could really imagine what would happen in a terminal crash, nobody would get into the cars at all, he says.
That would seem to sum up the devil-may-care attitude you describe pretty well. No imagination.
Submitted by robert goyer on August 16, 2010.
It's a quandary. Bad things can happen when you get out of bed in the morning. But life is for living. It's about finding reasonable accommodations and assessing and managing risk Pilots do it every flight.
To be perfectly honest, I don't have a huge problem with pilots taking calculated risks with their own lives. Just not with other people's lives.
Submitted by Anonymous on August 23, 2010.
As an instructor I have often had the pleasure of taking passengers and prospective pilots for their first ride in a light aircraft. Basic rules: explain EVERYTHING you are planning to do well before you do it, and be smooth and gentle at all times. If the guy/gal wants to see "what the aircraft can do" then a single steepish turn, rolled into smoothly and followed by a return to straight and level, is a good starting point. If they look even slightly green then it's home we go. Bottom line: they should enjoy the flight. If they are scared half out of their wits then they will NOT take home a good memory.
If they are indeed a prospective pilot trainee then they are briefed to the point where we do the takeoff together and then I hand over to them and "fly with my mouth" most or all of the way and back to the landing, which is, again, something that we do together. It has been my experience that trainees treated in this manner usually solo easily.
Submitted by h4zij on September 01, 2010.
One remark that really caught my attention in the article is:
"...in each case I've asked out loud for my pilot companion to stop it, and in each case he declined."
I can't imagine anyone sitting there and taking that and I certainly wouldn't tolerate that. I feel compelled to run the my pessimist flag up the pole and ask if you contacted the FAA or police upon landing? I am pretty certain that if this (declining to stop) happened to me, I would ORDER him/her to stop and ORDER him/her to return for a landing, while making it known as plainly as I could, that I WILL contact the authorities upon landing if he/she continues to perform the offending maneuvers.
An issue here for me is the mindset that we let these people get away with this, because it is a flying situation. Again, from the article:
"In every case they were remarkable flyers, experienced, knowledgeable and skilled at making the airplane do what they wanted it to do."
Robert - I take issue with this assesment. These folks are NOT remarkable flyers. They are reckless individuals who exercise poor judgment while exercising the privileges of their Airman Certificate. These pilots are no different than those folks who drive 40mph on a residential street full of kids.
I remind folks of two vivid examples that come to mind. The U.S. Navy P-3 crash in Pago Pago and the B-52 that crashed while practicing for an airshow. Both of these planes were piloted by gents with well known reckless habits, yet no one took action until numerous people died.
How many of you have asked to see someone's Airman Certificate, Medical Certificate and logbook (Biennial Flight Review and recent experience) before accepting a ride from a stranger? As a newly minted CFI in the early 80's, I was shocked (naive) at the number of people I encountered who were not legal to fly while attempting to rent an aircraft.
On one occassion I was riding back seat in an A-36 Bonanza while my CFI-I was giving instruction to the owner. This owner, also owned/flew about three warbirds from the airport and was local celebrity of sorts who frequently gave rides in his B-25. This individual was unable to fly straight and level for more than 15 to 20 seconds while under the hood (and yes, I was sitting still). After about 20 seconds our attitude would deteriorate into a spiral and the instructor would recover/climb for another attempt. I can't recall how many time we did this, but it was a bunch and after all these years, I am still upset that he didn't possess private pilot skills, yet he was apparently getting his BFR signed off and giving rides in high performance planes. Scary.
I have seen poor airmanship in both general aviation as a pilot and military aviation as a crewman. I have heard equally bad stories about corporate aviation from a couple corporate acquaintences. After experiencing a particularly harrowing flight in the mid 70's while a Navy Aircrewman, my philosophy became:
Never let the guy in the left seat kill you!
Submitted by SocalFlyer on September 02, 2010.
And always be alert for those famous (& often last) words: "Hey, watch this!" :-)
Submitted by robert goyer on September 06, 2010.
h4zij, your earlier comment was very much appreciated but very idealistic. In each case I asked, very firmly, very unambiguously, for the pilot to stop hot-dogging. In each case he declined. The point with this pilots is, they think you're asking them to stop because you don't know how much fun you're missing. The interpersonal dynamics are very complex, especially when the offending pilots are people you know well, which was the case here. Both of them, for the record, were CFIs, one an FAA designee. One was also a police officer. To whom would I have complained?
The point you make about the military pilots who were well known for reckless flying makes a good example of how complicated taking it to the next level can be. Do you think you are smarter, more assertive, tougher or a better judge of character and airmanship than the countless military aviators who flew with those pilots? I hope you would aver that the answer is "no." Why did none of them take it to the next level? Or maybe they did? Once you've made your wishes clearly known, there's not really much to be done other than hope the flight ends well and you can choose, as I did, never to fly with that person again.
Submitted by h4zij on September 06, 2010.
Great answer Robert. Definitely more food for thought. As for me, naturally I can't claim that I completely on one end of the spectrum, but as I get older, I do get closer; and I have to confess that that I have never had a civilian pilot surpise me as these guys have done to you. I did refused to fly with a CFI -I after a scud running incident; and as a CFI myself - refused to fly with a rated pilot after he used poor judgement on two consecutive flights.
I hope that the pilots you wrote about have read your articles/blogs and understand what they have done.
I remember that Lane Wallace wrote something similar in the print magazine a few years ago... Something about unbriefed/surprise aerobatics etc.
As for the Navy incident, I do recall that the inititial accident report (in those days, a single spaced telex/message) was somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 pages; which was extraordinary for the time. Only a few pages discussed the actual crash, the remaining report went back in time to this gent's initial Naval Aviator training and went into great detail (full names) of every member of the Navy that had anything to do with this guy's flying and it was ugly. Several people dropped the ball during his training, transistion to P-3's and fleet flying in the squadron. As I recall, the top 4 or 5 folks in the squadron were fired/reassigned/involuntrily retired etc. but I don't think anyone went to a Court Martial. I am pretty sure that each of his previous Commanding Officers were called on the carpet in some way. So, a whole cadre of naval officers were punished for not taking action. I do not remember if any of his squadron mates had refused to fly with him.
In the serice, you can only quietly ask not to fly with someone and hope your wishes are honored. Your other choice is to unvolunteer to fly; after which you will be reassigned to a non-flying billet or discharged.
I do remember that the civilian press reported that some of the Air Force pilot's squadron mates had asked not to fly with him.
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