Open Writing

Of Flights and Frights

I often wonder, as my neck cranes skywards at the sound of a familiar drone overhead, am I the only one who stops to notice the graceful flight of a light aircraft or the miraculous steep climb of a jumbo heading to faraway skies?

One would think so if the rush of nameless faces, eyes cast downwards, is anything to go by.

Every time I hear the roar of a Jumbo, the purr of a light aircraft or the sputter of a vintage plane, my palms grow itchy for the controls and I am transported back to another time.

I was nineteen when I experienced my first taste of flight in the small town of Coromandel in New Zealand, when I took a charter to the east coast. Derek was the town’s commercial pilot. An affable English gentleman with years of flying experience, he was a retired veterinarian and founder of the local aero club.

My face was pressed against the tiny window of the four-seater Cessna for most of the flight, so fascinated was I with the perfect patchworks of greens, browns and yellows below. The cars beneath were mere dots on winding roads as we navigated the puffy white cumulus clouds, climbing and descending, tilting and turning.

By the end of the flight I had decided this experience simply could not end and had made up my mind – I was going to learn to fly.

The mere utterance had my mother screaming down the phone, “Have you lost your mind!?” Still, this failed to deter me. I happily quoted newly-learned statistics on how much safer it was in the air than on the roads.

As there was no instructor in my town, I made the forty-five minute drive through winding bushland to Whitianga, another seaside town on the other side of the peninsula. This is where I first met Kirsty, a rookie instructor in her mid-twenties with a patient, straight-forward manner. Kirsty took me under her wing and several times a week we crammed into the tiny instructor’s room where I would try to make sense of the lectures, all the while itching to get into the waiting aircraft.

It took two months of incredible frustrations and more than a few bouncy landings before everything clicked and I pulled it all together. Suddenly I was pronounced proficient to fly solo. How can those words – magic words every new pilot longs to hear – strike such terror into one’s soul?

As my lifeline exited the aircraft, buckling her seatbelt over a frighteningly empty seat, I suddenly didn’t even feel capable of taxiing the four-seater. My mind had gone blank yet I was now expected to complete all the radio calls, manage a perfect take-off and circuit of the airfield and, worst of all, bring this beast in without collapsing the undercarriage?
Well, despite my nervous excitement, I managed a textbook landing which even the builders on the roof applauded as I taxied back to the aero club and shut the aircraft down.

That moment of absolute and complete freedom lived with me a long time and I realised it was possible to walk on air.

A short time later Kirsty left to take up a new job flying freight at night. She was excited to be a co-pilot on the Convair and left the little aero club behind with great expectations. Her aviation career had finally taken off.

I continued my flying at another aero club with Jeff, a very experienced instructor. Jeff had no qualms about flying into the little Coromandel strip of 600 metres, unlike more experienced city pilots. Coromandel posed problems for pilots unused to short, grass strips and was avoided whenever possible. There was only one direction for takeoff, regardless of the wind direction as there was a main road complete with overhead power lines and hills at one end. At the other end was the harbour.

I, however, was glad of the practical experience as this was the airfield I would use the most. I didn’t need to practise on less challenging, longer strips.

A month before my final test, Jeff flew into Coromandel to instruct me in advanced manoeuvres. I confidently carried out the pre-takeoff checks and we were soon on our way. I eased the aircraft into the air near the end of the runway and was right above the fence line, at less than one hundred feet, when the engine died.

My eyes grew wide and all I remember is automatically turning towards the small, scrubby piece of land sticking out of the rising tide.

Jeff finally realised I was not playing around (he can’t swim and I was always teasing him about taking a dunking) and took the controls. In seconds, he switched off the ignition and fuel, I braced myself against the dashboard and we bumped gently into the scrub, coming to a fairly quick stop.

We sat there for several seconds before opening the doors and exiting the aircraft. We had been lucky. The only damage was to the wheel covers.

It was a short walk through the muddy harbour and beneath an electric fence before we reached the airfield. All the while I was wondering if I had missed something in my checks, if the engine failure had been my fault.

A few weeks later an engineer returned the verdict – it was all the fault of a fly. How something so tiny can cause an incident of such catastrophic possibilities is beyond me, but somehow it had wedged itself inside the carburettor and blocked the flow of fuel. This is not something that can be detected during a pre-flight inspection but it is reassuring to know that most pilots will never experience an engine failure during their flying careers.

I gained my private pilot’s licence in March 1989 and decided to further my experience and try for the big time – the commercial licence.

In June I received a congratulatory card from Kirsty who said she loved her job; it was everything she had hoped for.

One month later Kirsty was killed when the aircraft she was co-piloting crashed after take-off from Auckland Airport on July 31, 1989. The accident was attributed to faulty instrumentation. She was 28 years old.

To be continued…..