Knowing What We Know
By Lane Wallace
January 2009
 Brad Hayden comes from an aviation family. His father and uncle had avionics shops, and he confesses to flying so much as a kid that he "kind of got sick of it." Of course, that might also have been due to the airsickness he and his five siblings battled on all those hot summer flights in the back seat of a family plane. But in any event, none of the Hayden kids pursued a pilot's license as adults.
Until this year. Three weeks ago as of this writing, Hayden, who's the marketing director for Aspen Avionics (think affordable, retrofittable glass cockpit instruments for GA aircraft), got his private pilot's license. At the age of 46.
"My last job, which was in the high-tech industry, overlooked the final approach path for SFO," he explained. "And I'd watch the planes land, day after day, and I finally decided I wanted to get back into aviation." So he joined Aspen, relocated his family to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and started taking flying lessons. "I guess if it's in your blood, it's in your blood," he said. "So I just finally decided to succumb to it."
Hearing him talk about his early lessons and solo opened a creaky door to some very dusty corners of my own mind. Fact is, the past blurs, after a while. Ask me today what went through my head the first day I flew after my solo, and I'm not sure I could have told you. But my memories came trickling back as Hayden related his recent thoughts and experiences.
Interestingly enough, he said, he didn't really feel like he'd attained pilot status when he soloed. It was the week after he soloed, when his instructor left town and signed him off to go practice on his own, that he first felt like a real pilot.
"I got up, checked the weather by myself, went to the airport, and they just handed me the book. So I went out to the airplane and realized it was completely up to me to get the preflight right. Nobody was there to back me up. So I preflighted, and then ..." he laughed as he said it ... "I just got in and took off. I was really scared about that." He paused and thought about it for a minute. "I think the first time I had to make a go/no-go decision on the weather all by myself, and realized I didn't have anyone in the right seat, or even watching ... that was the first time I really felt like a pilot."
Hearing his description brought back the overcast day in southern Indiana when I first got the airplane book from the FBO counter all by myself and realized, upon getting out to the airplane, that NOBODY WAS HOLDING MY HAND ANYMORE. Terrifying doesn't quite cover it. I don't remember anything else about that flight. Just the knee-shaking butterflies I felt when it hit me that all the responsibility for taking this 2,000-pound machine off the planet and returning it safely again was squarely and completely on my highly inexperienced shoulders.
But is that when I first began to see myself as a pilot? Technically, of course, I guess I was, in the most basic of senses and definitions -- certified to operate an aircraft by myself, by an FAA-approved authority. But I knew there was a whole lot more to being a pilot than just managing some touch and goes, or surviving a brief trip to the practice area. So while that first solo adventure was a momentous milestone, I don't think I felt deserving of the full label yet.
In theory, I guess we're all supposed to feel like legitimate pilots the day the FAA examiner gives us a pass on our check ride. But is that really when it happens?
"I think [that point] moves along as one's aviation career advances," Eric Radtke, president of Sporty's Academy, says with an amused laugh. "I mean, when I soloed for the first time, I really did feel like a pilot. I thought I was IT. Then, when I received my first certificate, I thought, 'well, I wasn't really a pilot before. But now I'm a pilot.' Then I took my first passenger up, and I thought, 'well, now I'm really a pilot.' Then, the first time I had to divert and land at an alternate airport ... when I got down, I thought, 'Wow. Now I'm really a pilot. I really wasn't before.' I just didn't know enough to know I wasn't really a pilot at that first solo."
Indeed, it's said there are four stages to learning. First, you don't know what you don't know. Then you know what you don't know. Then you don't know what you know. Then, finally, you know what you know.
The overconfidence of a student who's just soloed would fall into the first category. The respectful humility of the second stage (reached by all but the most idiotically cocky of pilots) probably sets in soon after a pilot seriously scares him- or herself for the first time, and it lasts ... well, that's the interesting point. If a pilot gets out and does enough cross countries and has enough diverse and challenging experiences, he or she will eventually move -- perhaps without even knowing it -- from the second category into the third. You begin to have a reflex for how to counteract that crosswind gust. You sense when you have to add power, or when the airplane begins to wander off course. You battle unexpected weather challenges and turbulence and land more tired and annoyed than scared. If asked about your piloting skills, you might answer, "Yeah, I'm a pretty good pilot," conveying an increasing confidence in your ability but a lingering humility for what you still don't know.
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