Flying

 When I was young all I wanted to be was an airline pilot. However, my uncle (Dad's younger brother) had died in 1942 in a plane crash so this really trashed my Dad's family because he said his brother was the nicest person in the whole family.

So, when I told my Dad of my dream to be an airline pilot he told me I had to promise him never to get my pilot's license until he died. I made this agreement and kept it with my father even though it was a hard one to keep because this is what I had always wanted to do with my life (either become and airline pilot or a bush pilot in Alaska or Canada.

Looking back now I'm sort of glad my Dad made this agreement with me because likely I wouldn't be alive now otherwise.

Many people have told me I'm just too bold a person to have survived very long as a pilot.

There's a saying that is absolutely true:

"THERE ARE OLD PILOTS AND THERE ARE BOLD PILOTS BUT THERE ARE NO OLD BOLD PILOTS"

THIS IS AN ABSOLUTELY TRUE STATEMENT AND PEOPLE WHO KNEW ME KNEW I WOULD NOT SURVIVE AS A PILOT JUST LIKE MY UNCLE WHO WAS ALSO BOLD LIKE I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN TOO.

When I finally soloed in a Cessna 152 it was a couple of years after my Dad died. By then, I realized (in my late 30s) that flying a private plane really wasn't a safe thing to do.

Here's the real problem:

IF you are flying someone can hit you front the front, the back, the side. They can be  gaining altitude below you and not see you. The can be descending from above you and not see you.

You only can see to your right and your left and straight ahead. You cannot see above you above your front window. you cannot see below your front window, you cannot see below your right or left window or above the top of your right or left window.

If you are in a car you are at least all on the same plane, on the same road. But, in the air there are no highways only altitudes with people going all sorts of directions.

It's true supposedly you are supposed to be flying certain directions at certain altitudes but there are idiot pilots in the sky too which I have dealt with.

The weirdest one was in a passenger plane my family and I were in landing at San Jose Airport from Palm Springs, California after visiting my father in law at a Golf Resort there where he owned a house for his 80th birthday then.

I looked out the right window of the landing plane we were in and saw a plane on the right wing. I mentioned this to a person across the aisle there and he said, "There's also a plane on our left wing."

And I said to him: "That's really bad because in an emergency he can only go straight up or down he cannot bank right or left because of the planes there.

Sure enough. We went straight up into the sky within a minute or two.

Some idiot had flown up under us and so our airline pilot had to stand the passenger jet on it's tail to avoid a collision. The whole plane screamed and people were throwing up.

Because when was the last time you went straight up in a passenger jet?

Of course we all survived but what a crazy thing!

This is why (around big cities especially)  I realized it just isn't safe to fly VFR around so many planes even during the day. 

So, unless you can fly IFR (Instrument flight rules) instead of Visual Flight rules it really isn't safe to fly with a whole lot of private planes around because 1/2 of them often are idiots who ONLY fly on weekends.

Now, if you are way out away from cities it might be a different story but then often you are around mountains and deserts and obstacles with nowhere to land also. So, if you fantasize about flying just remember what I realized while soloing in my late 30s. The other thing was I had several businesses that I owned this is true but I also had to get several kids through high school and college so I decided to leave well enough alone and just stayed with the fact that I had soloed in a Cessna 152 then.

Here's the other problem in a private plane.

Let's suppose you are with your whole family and you usually fly alone. Then you have loaded all their luggage on the plane without weighing it. This often means that that pilot and his family will die on takeoff simply because weight is a REALLY big deal especially on takeoffs even moreso than landings.

So, what often happens is the man isn't used to flying with either his family or the extra weight of all the luggage so he cuts into the air at too steep an angle and the wing stalls and he and his family all die.

This happens also all the time. Because the father wants to show off for the children and forgets that the plane is overloaded and cannot even take off that overloaded. So, often they get up a few hundred feet in altitude and then the wing stalls and they all fall to earth dead.

This is what I call "The family killer".

My uncle died in 1942. However, other members of our extended family crashed in the early 2000s to make me realize I didn't want to be flying when we lost this couple and their dog. Their niece who was about 15 or 17  decided it didn't feel right, however, and she lived to tell about it. But, the couple with sons one of which was still in college were lost to everyone.

Flying is not for bold people. Flying is for methodical people who don't take risks flying. This is how it really is. All the rest eventually die flying often.

Flying is one of the least forgiving sports there is. So, giving it up is one reason I'm still alive to play with my Grandkids and to travel with my kids even at 73.

But, many people living in Alaska and other places might disagree with me who fly their planes to work every day.

It's sort of like driving a car or a truck, the better you get at doing something like this the safer you are in the air. The least safe is a weekend bold pilot. This is what people need to know most if they actually want to live a long life.