Why We Fly
By Gordon Baxter
December 1998
 Private Pilot, U.S.A. There is almost nothing like it anywhere else in the whole world. It’s the bottom rung in the ladder of private flying; this is where beginners begin. Only glider pilots have less cost and fewer requirements in order to cress the controls and look out over a shoulder at one’s wings during the mystery of flight.
Flying, any kind of flying, is addictive. Once you have taken instruction from a qualified teacher and in a surprisingly short time he has seen fit to set you free, nothing will come along into your life that equals this experience. There will be many challenges available to improve yourself, but from the day you solo, you will never stop thinking about it. Few of us, even after a lifetime, can shut up about it.
Isn’t this terribly expensive? You might well ask. As compared with what? It’s not as expensive as indulging a hearty appetite for fine wines or beer or bass, and you get to see much more of the countryside.
And time is money. One of the most tractive aspects of aviation is that even the slowest, most ordinary airplane can get you there on a good day faster than the most elegant automobile legally driven. But then what? There you are out at the airport while the business you’ve come to tend to is in town. Never mind; providing a set of wheels for customers who arrived on wings no longer raises eyebrows out at airports, large or small. They all have accommodations for you, the traveler.
What is expected of you as a single-engine private pilot compares favorably with the age and costs of that epic day when one of your elders and betters saw fit to set you free in the family sedan. The big difference is what’s going on inside your own heart and head. Even after a lifetime of being a part of that crowd on the road you’re still just wrecker bait; but from the unforgettable instant that all your senses and training say it’s okay now to ease back on the controls and be blessed with lift, you’re special. There are really no adequate words. This is what your airplane was designed to do. It is a close harmony sung between the fine mind that laid down every line of your airplane, and the response it’s gently asking from you at this moment when the engine has given enough airspeed to the wings to lift the entire weight of the airplane into the freedom of flight.
Isn’t that scary? Much depends on the design of your airplane and your own level of skill – which improves noticeably the more you do it. That’s why pilots can shamelessly ask eachother the total number of hours the have in flight and what kind of airplane they are flying.
To all of us a common goal is a smooth landing. Airplanes need to come in contact with this great solid planet while traveling in a straight line. That’s why they have such generous-sized rudders and vertical fins. The landing is always special, whether it’s a pilot alone in a light plane being played with by the wind, or a captain, his sleeves heavy with years and four gold stripes, who still thinks of his landing as his personal signature. For the captain there’s always all those paying passengers back there riding the cushions who judge you by your landing even though they themselves couldn’t do it on a clear, calm, sunny day with an interstate-size runway.
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