It’s pretty clear from reading the flying magazines, and watching the graph of active pilots make like the S&P 500, that there is a problem with recruiting new pilots. The vast majority of the pundits put the blame for both the huge attrition rate and the low numbers who start lessons on the high cost of flight. It’s true that learning to fly is not cheap, but I suspect the problem is compounded by the near complete lack of sensible training curricula. There are a few national flight training companies, like American Flyers, who have spent some time developing a recipe for primary instruction, but even with their offerings we are in the dark ages of learning to fly.
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| Dan explaining to Luke that the big vertical swingy thing is really important and should be well attached to the airframe. |
SCUBA diving was in a similar state 40 years ago and PADI, a strong certification agency (with a VERY healthy profit motive), changed the face of diving and made it accessible to every person who could spell cruise ship. The truth is, flying is not hard. It really isn’t…and it is getting easier. The whole navigation thing for example, has become trivial just in the time I have been flying. There are a lot of things to keep track of when flying and they range from brain work, like communicating on the radio and figuring out where you will be in five minutes, to the pure hand eye of keeping the plane in level flight on a particular heading. But, none of these tasks is beyond a reasonably bright ten year old. Just spend half an hour watching a pair of grade schoolers work the joystick plus button field of a video game controller. If they were playing a flight simulator hooked up to a real UAV they would be flying a Predator through the Holland Tunnel after 30 minutes. The problem with flight training is that it is capricious, arbitrary and has a very poorly thought out combination of flying, ground school and homework.
Flying is awesome fun…it just is. It should sell itself as a leisure activity even if it is more expensive than skiing. Ground school is not fun at all and the homework is insanely boring. We need some pro education folks who care about and love flying to figure out the equivalent of the PADI method for learning to fly. As much as possible of the groundwork needs to be laid at home, on computers, hardwiring skills that will make the cockpit an instantly interesting and understandable place. After a first flight with stalls, steep turns and landings, the second flight should be a cross country and the third through fifth should be 15 landings each. Then solo. My grandfather soloed in 5 hours. This was not unusual in the first world war and rumor has it that those airplanes were a tad less forgiving that the ones we fly now. Of course he did break off the landing gear on his third solo landing, so there is a downside to getting in a squirrely plane too early. Flying isn’t hard, as WEB Griffin was fond of writing NASA taught a few chimps to fly. We need a method to get people into the air quickly an easily so they spend their money buying an airplane rather than a PPL.
Barring that, everyone needs to learn to fly from Dan. Preferably in a Cessna 150. I had 9 flight instructors on the way to getting my private pilot’s license in about 70 hours. I ended up finishing with the one I started with but that was purely a matter of logistics rather than inclination. Had Dan lived in southern California I would have take 40 hours and had three instructors. I was about 22 hours in to learning to fly and had soloed the P28A Warrior when I had to move north to the island to teach for the summer. I was already completely addicted, so there was no way I would go without flying. I figured I would take a lesson or two so I did not lose ground. I ended up finding the ultimate primary flight instructor and flying one of the most fun types there is. Looking back at my log book to get this right, I flew 2.3 hours with Dan in the 150 before he let me loose on my own. That means that not only did he get me to transition from high wing to low and four seater to two seater, but he also got confident enough in my ability to land the thing that he was willing to let me go on my own. 16 landings. Dan managed to teach me a ton during those landings all the while evaluating me for solo potential. I am in awe. So is my father in law, who is training with Dan now.
The Cessna 150 was built as a trainer - a two seat, tricycle gear, stable beast with a tiny engine. For some reason it was given the name commuter, though it is hard to believe that many served in this role. The side by side seating is cramped, and it is not the airplane for the vertically well endowed. At 6’1” I would say I am within an inch or two of needing to fly without a headset. Like the Skyhawk, the 150 is a very ordinary plane, and that is a real strength when you are learning to fly. It simply does not have any surprising or bad habits. The most difficult thing about it is what made the plane worth returning to long after I learned to fly. It is really light and is at the mercy of every gust or wind, every burble, rotator and swirl will kick the plane a little in one direction or another. There is not much that is more fun that landing the 150 in a 20 knot 45 degree crosswind at an airport like KFHR that has some structure around the runway. It was the first plane that really reinforced the three dimensionality of flying because on short final a lump in the air could perturb several axes (roll, pitch and yaw) all at once. Where the Warrior and Skyhawk plow down the approach corridor, nose dropping or rising with gusts, the 150 will suddenly be pointing 20 degrees down and 45 degrees right with the left wing low. All from one bump. It is a total joy to get to the point where dancing on the rudder pedals and swinging the yoke will keep this little dragonfly headed straight down the pipe towards the numbers.
This great little plane is not all about training either. If I had an average mission with fewer seats it is hard to think of a more economical solution to the transport problem in a place like the San Juan Islands. Flights are rarely more than an hour. With reserve fuel that means you need 14 gallons. That leaves room for fat guys and sides of beef in the baggage compartment. Perhaps my most memorable flight in the 150, and a flight that hooked a colleague on flying, was a night return from Boeing field (KBFI) to Friday Harbor (KFHR). It was a moonless summer night, so clear you could read the Flight Guide by starlight. I picked up Stas at midnight after his 16 hour flight from Germany in the heavy iron. His bags in the back plus a little extra fuel for night flight over water peace of mind, left us somewhere between max gross weight and, well, let’s just call it max gross weight. Thanks goodness in the Pacific Northwet the summer nights are cool. We waddled down the 10,000 foot runway at Boeing and started the 75 foot per minute ascent to 3500 feet. I flew us from town to town up the coast, each little burg a scattering of lighted jewels that begged for Thomas Kincaid to put up his easel. The big, forbidding dark areas were intimidating, but also a wonderful contrast to the well lit land. We made a 4 mile crossing over water around Anacortes and approached Friday Harbor from the East. The town was well lit and a ferry rested at the wharf for the night. As we dropped down to 1100 feet over Brown Island I clicked the mic to light up the runway. The pretty blue and white lights popped magically to life and Stas auibly gasped before offering (in his endearing Ukrainian Accent) that it was like we were millionaires returning to OUR airport for the night. It was a special feeling as we dropped onto the runway as lightly as thistledown and rolled towards the 34 end. I turned off and said ‘that’s what I love about flying’…and it is. Controlling a well thought out airframe as it does its job is crystal meth for the thinking set. What a total blast.
So, a perfectly reasonable 150 will set you back $15-20,000 and will be as inexpensive to run as a large SUV. How can you not go out and buy an airplane when there are hundreds of these available for sale?
