A Chick in the Cockpit (3 page)

4
Talk to God in the Control Tower

1.
Know what you're going to say before you key the mike

2.
Don't say “ummm...” or “ahhhh...” at the beginning of every sentence

3.
Listen to the guidance instructions

4.
Trust, but verify

5.
You are still ultimately responsible for your actions

Learning to fly at a tower controlled airport adds an extra burden to student pilots. Before moving anywhere on the airfield, you have to get permission from the Tower Gods. It's important to teach student pilots that the people in the tower are just trying to give you guidance through their airspace, while at the same time you are maintaining control of your own aircraft.

It's sometimes frustrating to have to ask the Tower Gods permission for everything, but it's because they see what you can't. They have the big picture of everything around you, while you can only see out your own small windows. Something as simple as a few feet or a few words that you can't see or hear can change or take away your life. So, even though they are called air traffic “controllers,” you have the final authority as to where and how you move your aircraft.

The deadliest accident in aviation history was from a simple misunderstanding of air traffic control instructions. On March 27, 1977, two Boeing 747s slammed into each other on the runway in Tenerife, Spain, killing 583 people. They died because of a few confusing words. One of the captains was certain he had clearance for takeoff and even though the copilot hinted that he was wrong, they put the throttles forward to their death.

After my first solo flight, all rational thought to my future went out the window. I decided not to return to the University of Minnesota, but rather, focus on flight training and getting my pilot's license. I justified it by telling myself that once I got that done, I'd go back to school. Ha. I never looked back. Well, I take that back. I looked back, but about twenty years later.

I kept working my three jobs, and any quiet moment I had was spent studying for my ratings. I never got less than 94% on any of my written exams (damn instrument test), and as soon as I got done with one, I'd start on the next. My pilot's license currently reads like this on the back: “Ratings - Airline Transport Pilot: Airplane Multiengine Land, B-727, CE 500. Commercial Privileges: Airplane Single Engine Land. Private Privileges: Airplane Single Engine Sea.”

The sea plane rating was just to show off.

“Flight Engineer Turbojet Powered. No Limitations.”

That's right
. No limitations
. This was my ticket to seeing the world and having someone else pay me to do it. Getting that list of ratings required me to work seventy to eighty hours a week for years. That kind of schedule alienated every non-aviation friend I had and, as my mom would say, put all my eggs in one basket. I was one-dimensional and boring. Surprisingly, pilots
are
boring because all they talk about is aviation. It's an immersion into a lifestyle. Everything you do and how you live is guided by it. I was at the mercy of my beeper and I never made plans. I had to live within fifteen minutes of the airport, not do drugs, haul myself out of bed at 0200 when it's -20 degrees F for air ambulance flights, and I had to have the attitude of “Yes please, may I have another?”

Despite the dedication, getting the hours in the logbook to make the leap from private pilot to being a paid pilot is an enormous hurdle, and the dropout rate at the first barrier is alarming. The pilots who manage to leap this hurdle have allowed “controllers” to guide them onto the correct flight path. It's these unintentional mentors that guide pilots through the complicated lessons and challenges in aviation. It's frustrating for the pilot because they think they know it all. But they succeed because the controllers in their lives have a better perspective on their situation and manage to get the pilot to listen to their guidance.

Within weeks of earning my private pilot rating, Clara Johansson blasted into my life, all seventy-something, gray-hair, angry, wrinkly years of her.

Clara walked through the electric sliding doors one night and strode to the front desk before I could hide the books I was studying. She had no filter for her thoughts and she forgot to say hello before demanding, “What are you studying there?” I had been studying for my private pilot written exam, so figured I wouldn't get into too much trouble since we were at an airport. I would never have thought Clara was a pilot. Hunched over with curly gray hair and wrinkles blazing between every muscle, Clara was a longtime pilot and member of the Minnesota 99s, which is part of an international organization for women in aviation. Clara was always on the lookout for women pilots, and their sightings were rare.

Clara was exuberant as we talked about flying. She shook her arthritic finger at me and told me to give her a call the minute I earned my instrument rating. Clara said she'd help me get some hours if I was willing to sacrifice some time. Emphasis on
sacrifice.
Several weeks later, I got the rating and gave her a call.

At the time, the 99s were providing volunteer flights for the Red Cross. The Red Cross would reimburse the pilot for fuel and some expense of the aircraft if, in exchange, the pilot would provide pilot services for free. I would work all day and then, especially in winter, I'd crawl into a snowmobile suit at night, get into an unheated airplane, and fly to remote locations in Minnesota.

In the glory of reverse discrimination, this program was only available for women pilots. There weren't a lot of us, so I could fly as much as my schedule would allow. The guys I worked with were pissed, which made me gloat all the more.

Clara was the most cantankerous, loud (her husband Arnie was practically deaf, and I think she just got tired of repeating herself, so she just yelled all the time to everybody), yet determined woman I'd ever met. She kept checking on me, my progress, and would literally yell at me if I hadn't flown for a week or two.

“You been flying lately, Erika?”

“Nope, the weather has been bad, and I added an extra shift at the airport.”

To which Clara would reply, “Oh bullshit! Don't you give me that lame excuse. You are young and have no reason to not get your butt out there and at least do a few touch and goes. Don't let this time just slip by, get the hell out there!”

So, with Clara's voice bouncing around the back of my head, I'd called the Red Cross coordinator and told them I was available for a trip.

My task would be to pick up blood from blood drives (those Iron Range football teams would fill more bags of blood than I had room for!) and get it to the processing blood bank in St. Paul. They were going after the platelets, so we were on a strict time schedule.

It wasn't exactly first class accommodations. It would be twenty below zero outside, and the aircraft had a heater that only warmed the air one inch away from the vent, so my snowmobile suit due was my only source of warmth.

When I look back on my early years of flying and training, I can't believe I survived. It's hard to believe any of us do. In my case, I survived because of the arrogance of being twenty years old, flying when it's twenty below zero in winter or one hundred twenty degrees in July, strapped in a single engine airplane, often at night, in the most remote parts of the region. Add in bad weather, being dead-dog tired with minimal experience, loaded with enough boxes full of blood to satisfy all the mosquitoes in Minnesota, and I had a perfect mixture of sheer will and abject insanity.

With all the crazy things pilots do to earn their flight hours, it's amazing we have airline pilots. Crop dusting, flight instructing, banner towing, airborne traffic reporting, glider towing, air ambulance, cargo flying, and parachute dropping is a short list of all the ways pilots earn their hours. They're all dangerous, yet pilots don't see it as a risk. It's just a necessity and, along the way, they just try to stay out of the way of the FAA. I hate even to think about the weight and balance charts that I was supposed to abide by. Catch me if you can, Mr. FAA Man.

Speaking of which, you can spot an FAA person a mile away. He's the only guy wearing a tie and cheap sport coat, carrying a clipboard. Knowing about the walking cliché was delightfully helpful if I ever saw one walking towards my plane—which I did on several occasions. Each time I was ramp checked, I realized I knew more about what I was doing than the person checking me, which gave me confidence.

Even with confidence, modern technology, and equipment, flight training is still very dangerous, and I lost a few friends during this learning period. The most painful loss of a friend during flight training was my co-worker and friend Sal. He was already a mechanic and flight engineer on the Boeing 727 with me, and he wanted to earn his pilot's license so he could fly the heavy iron, not just flip switches at the engineer's panel. He was over the deserts of Las Vegas with his flight instructor doing some standard training maneuvers and, for reasons we'll never know for sure, accidently spun it into the ground. Sal had just married the love of his life and was in the process of moving from Las Vegas to Minnesota. He had a small zoo of animals and a whole future of aviation ahead of him.

The problem with new or young pilots is that they're optimists and they want to go flying. They justify what they think they see:
Oh, the weather isn't that bad. The crosswind isn't that strong. That thunderstorm looks like it's moving the other way.
We don't think that the worst can ever happen. We're in control and we know what we're doing. And for the most part, it's that overconfidence that pushes you through the scary days of single engine flying. Fear is blinding, so the last thing you want your body and mind to do in a bad situation is seize up with fear and shut down. You strive for just the opposite. You want to say to yourself in a moment's reflex that there isn't a doubt in your mind you're going to get through this temporary emergency. It's temporary because you either fix it or you're dead.

The experienced pilot has the same overconfidence, but it is now due to the fact that they have survived their young pilot self and actually lived through it. Bragging rights accompany all old pilots. They've earned it.

The first five hundred hours for any pilot are the hardest to earn—unless you're wealthy. Since the trend has been away from military flying, most pilots these days pay for their own training and have to find creative ways to get those hours. I was blessed that the Red Cross was paying a portion of my flight time. However, this wonderful and life changing program was about to come to a sad and sudden end.

Clara and her husband Arnie were on their way back from a Red Cross blood pick up and were entering the air traffic pattern at the Downtown St. Paul Airport. At the same time, an instructor and student were entering that exact same airspace. If you think about it, the odds of having two aircraft in exactly the same square footage of airspace at the same time is astronomically small, yet they both defied the odds at the exact same moment.

They collided in mid-air and neither aircraft, nor passengers could sustain the impact. The first responders, unaware that one aircraft was transporting large quantities of blood, could not comprehend the scene they came upon.

The family of the student went for the deep pockets and sued the Red Cross, and won, which meant the end of the program. Litigation wins again, and because of this fluke accident which ended the program, others might have died not getting the necessary blood for transfusions.

Clara's death was the first moment where I questioned my own mortality and the intense realization that I was directly responsible for whether I lived or died in an aircraft. The ebbing realization also spilled over into my reality that no matter how responsible we are as pilots, we still might die. It was a preventable accident, but all accidents are preventable in some way; it's the variables that kill us. Put the phrase “if only” in front of all the variables.
If only
they were eight feet higher or lower
, then
they would not have died,
then
they would not have shut down the program, and other women pilots would've benefited. Just eight feet!
If only
they were one minute later returning to St. Paul. The line between life and death is that small.

At the time of this mid-air collision, I had already earned five hundred single engine flight hours and was begging for right seat time in the light twin engine aircraft that were based out of Ethan Aviation. Clara had pushed me down the first path, and I was ready to take it from there. I wanted to honor her life and push on with mine. I sweet-talked the local pilots for flight time, and I had no qualms about batting an eyelash to get there. Multi-engine time is precious and hard to come by, and trust me; every pilot on the airport was working it any way they could. I might as well use my perceived weakness as my strength.

I inched my way up through the flight hours in my logbook and months passed. I begged, pouted, and strode into the charter department daily telling them I'm available for the right seat. I just wanted to run the radios and get the coffee, just give me a chance. Come on!

The chief pilot was a narrow minded, balding, borderline obese man who I wouldn't allow to fly without a copilot if I were a customer paying big bucks to charter an aircraft. He looked like he could have a heart attack at any moment. Without a doubt, he was very knowledgeable about aviation and he wielded it as his weapon to degrade everyone around him to reinforce his position, but he was not the image of a suave pilot.

After an intense flu outbreak that put half our staff on sick leave, the chief pilot lumbered up to my desk on a bleak Minnesota morning, put his sweaty palms on the edge, and leaned his bald head in my direction. His heavy coffee breath carried his voice to my soul, “Okay, get your ass out here at 3:30 in the a.m. tomorrow for a check ride. Pass it, and I'll assign you to a flight as copilot...yes, that is 3:30 in the A.M.” I practically swallowed my tongue I was so happy, and 3:30 in the A.M. didn't sound too early for me. Thank God for the flu.