Things My Flight Instructor Never Taught Me
A View From The Right Seat #112
Most of the time, when you hear me talk about a view from the right seat, I am speaking as a flight instructor. In this story, I am not speaking as a flight instructor but about the right seat occupant, a passenger. For most of us who own an airplane, that passenger is usually the significant other in your life. In conversations with other pilots, I have heard this individual referred to as the “non flying spouse”. I have been an aircraft owner for more than 20 years now, and my wife has flown everywhere with me. When we were young(er) and had no kids, her attitude about flying was radically different than in the post-children reality that is my current existence.
My wife grew up around airplanes. Her dad was senior flight test engineer for Grumman Aerospace during the heyday of post WWII military aircraft development. When she went to work with dad, she got to play with the F-14’s, A-6’s, and the occasional lunar module. As a kid she was “forced” to go to the Grumman company picnic to see the Blue Angels perform, every single year. But while she may be in love with me, she has never been in love with aviation. If I were to say to her, “hey honey lets fly out to the Hamptons for the weekend,” she would race me to the plane. But if I were to say, “hey it’s been a tough week and it’s a beautiful night, let’s go for a ride in the plane,” she would find 49 other things to do that were far more appealing to her. Mind you, she would never stop me from going, either alone or with a flying buddy, just not with her.
Over time, she made an effort to gain enough flight experience that she could handle an airplane fairly well. As we progressed to larger aircraft, she demonstrated a natural ability to fly them, if not well, then well enough in an emergency. Her primary concern is probably typical of most non-aviators forced into the “non flying spouse” role, and that is, if “he” has a heart attack, “I” don’t want to die too. Despite my lifelong assurances that I was never going to die in a small airplane, if for no other reason than there was no way that I was going to let her next husband get my money that easily, my wife remained, and still is, an uneasy passenger. The arrival of my son has only added to her uneasiness. When the three of us are in a plane together the tension is so thick you can cut it with a knife. My kid picks up on my wife’s tension and he stresses out. It is no fun for me at all.
A few years ago we went to Tampa for a day at a theme park. It was severe clear when we departed West Palm Beach, less than an hour away. Upon arrival, a marine layer had moved in and I was forced to file a pop-up, local IFR flight plan. Our destination airport was a VFR only airport and at minimum vectoring altitude, we were solid in the clouds. The controller asked my intentions and I asked for the ILS to Brooksville, about 20 miles away. I asked my wife to look up the approach plate, a task she had not been briefed on, and she couldn’t find it. All the while, she was asking me why we are doing this and going there, and what about the rent a car etc, etc. My kid picked up on the cockpit stress level and came unglued. When my kid gets a little older and can handle the plane himself, that should all go away. In the meantime, I take it one flight at a time working toward easing that anxiety.
In the last few years, VFR has been no problem; only IFR and crummy weather operations set them off. For those trips, the solution to the anxiety has come in the form of a second, qualified pilot on board. I find no particular consolation in the knowledge that it not just my wife and my kid that do this. In the 14 years I have been a flight instructor, I have given dozens of “Pinch Hitter” courses to the wives and kids of my students and buddies who were going through the same thing. By empowering the non-flying spouse with the knowledge and more importantly the confidence to land the plane in an emergency, it has made flying together not just tolerable but enjoyable. I had one buddy, a hangar tenant of mine, who had not one but two airplane accidents. Both times his wife and one of his kids or the other were in the plane. The second incident was a bird strike. They hit a baby eagle on final approach to our home airport. His wife was convinced that had it come through the windshield and taken her husband out, she and her kid would have perished as well. This college educated professional couple had defied the odds and had not one but two aviation accidents in the about 500 flight hours that this man showed in his logbook. Logic and the law of averages argument just didn’t work for her anymore. She came to me with one purpose; teach her to land the plane. Two weeks and 10 flight hours later, she could land that thing as well as anyone. In the middle, a few hours of ground instruction reinforced what we had done in the plane and reviewed communications procedures.
The fact is that she was done in five hours, but she wanted the extra dual to be absolutely sure she would and could perform. What I didn’t know was that she had neglected to tell her husband she was doing this. They went out flying for dinner one night and he was absolutely shocked when she asked if she could “try a landing”. He agreed, she greased it on, then, fessed up to the dual instruction. When I asked her why the secret, she told me that she thought that her husband would be insulted that she didn’t trust him with her fate. Whatever. That scenario never crossed my mind.
Another buddy asked me to teach his wife simply because he didn’t have the self-control to keep his hands off the controls and let her fly. That, I could totally understand. The most interesting case for me was the number one captain at Eastern Airlines. He was retiring and was dead set on buying a Cessna 195. The airplane he ultimately purchased had a turbocharged Jacobs radial engine in it. He planned to winter in Florida and spend the summers in Washington state. His second wife was not an aviator. What’s more, he insisted that we instruct her in a tailwheel airplane since that was what they were going to fly. For those unfamiliar with the Cessna 190-195, they are classic old radial-engined monoplanes. They are virtually blind on landing and have a nasty reputation for being difficult to handle on the ground.
I spent 35 hours in a Cub with this woman and she still hadn’t soloed. To be sure the problem wasn’t me, I sent her out with another tailwheel instructor for another 8 hours, and still, not even close to solo. I’m entirely convinced that had I been allowed to instruct her in a nose wheel equipped aircraft, she would have done it in 10 hours, but her husband wasn’t hearing any of that. They flew off to Washington State and I never heard from either of them again. What does that go to prove? Only that the non flying spouse needs to have a motivating factor to want to learn to do this, and not simply to do it because the flying spouse wants them to. Whether that motivation is self-preservation or self- satisfaction (if “he” can do it, “I” can do it) it really doesn’t matter. Though they love us and want to share our time and adventures, it is most likely they will never share our passion for aviation. The flip side to this is that if the non-flying spouse develops a new level of comfort in the airplane, you are going to get to do more flying.
Pinch Hitter courses have been around for a long time. Personally, it has been my experience that a trusted friend or instructor who has done this sort of thing before, is more likely to bridge the confidence gap then some young flight school instructor. I’m not knocking them, but it is hard to put the trust of your life in someone young enough to be your kid, and take it seriously. All of the flying should be from the right seat, since that’s where it would have to happen for real. And it should be done in your plane, not some flight school plane, even if it is the same make and model. Knowing where all the switches are, and how the radios work, are part of the deal and no two planes are identical, especially older aircraft that have undergone extensive equipment retrofits.
When I teach a non-flying spouse, I keep it super simple. If the plane will land with the flaps up, let’s leave them there. I believe the less re-configuring of the airplane that has to be learned, the better. I’ll go find a nice big runway and “vector” them to it just as a controller would in a real emergency. I teach them how to answer the questions that the controllers will ask, and get the information they will need from the radios and instruments on the panel. But mostly what I do is teach them that the plane will fly just fine by itself. If you have an autopilot, I teach them to use it. The key here, as in any life-threatening emergency is to relax and allow the self-preservation mode each of us possess to kick in.
As a closing thought, consider this; most of us wouldn’t think twice about spending money to increase the usefulness or utility of our aircraft. Money spent on addressing the fears of the “non-flying spouse” will do both.