You Gotta Take the Gritty to Appreciate the Pretty

Every aviation journalist on and above the third rock from the sun has written, possibly more than once, about the “beauty of flight.”

The subject of these evergreen columns changes occasionally, with titles like “The Magic of Flight” or “The Dream of Flight,” but they are all basically the same. Magic, beauty, and dreams all describe flying at various times for all of us. Who among us hasn’t sat in their cockpits in awe of the splendor viewed outside our windshields?

I have been around long enough to experience my share of magic, mystery, and awe-inspiring flights. I think I have seen and felt almost everything magical except for flying formation with a UFO.

Some authors write entire books about talking seagulls, mystical flying adventures, little princes, and the like. I have been known to type an article or essay about airplanes that silently speak with me, deep thoughts I have had as I traversed lines of brightly colored thunderstorms.

The fact that we can fly is a thing of magic, giving this mishmash of sentimental writing a basis in truth. Still, an essential ingredient is missing in each iteration of mystical and emotional thoughts.

All authors, except for me today, leave out the hard work, sacrifice, not fun times, and outright crappiness you must put up with and overcome to reach the magic.

These aviation inspirations and happy occurrences won’t happen unless you put in some dues-earning struggle and effort.

The most beautiful instrument approach I have done so far in my life was when I was flying a 767 from San Juan to JFK. It was a long overwater flight that had the distinction of being one of the few times I have flown through moderate or worse turbulence nonstop for more than four hours.

We approached JFK, knowing that they were experiencing very low ceilings—CAT II for you gauge jockeys out there. We shot the approach and broke out just in time to see a rainbow on the short final, which was the most beautiful thing I think I ever saw.

Sure, it was life-enhancing and magical, but it took me 30 years of flying (23 of them with the airline) to get there. 

To get to the left seat of that 767, I had to fly quite a few not-so-nice jobs and experience thousands of hours of actual instrument flight. Not to mention the long training, recurrent training, and checkrides to make my crew and I qualified for the approach.

Fighter pilots, especially older ones, have quite a few amazing and true stories of magic and derring-do in their past. They, too, spent years of effort on those missions, not to mention the danger of being shot down or captured.

Beyond combat hazards, fighter pilots went through intense officer candidate training, flight training, weapons training, and God knows what other training. They then left home for months or years to experience the magic of flying the most exquisite aircraft in the world.

None of us who were lucky enough to fly professionally, like I have, or for the military, like so many other wonderfully talented and brave people have, are complaining. 

We were happy and felt blessed to be there.

Your and my experiences with the beauty and charm of flight are more poignant because they weren’t easy to achieve. 

It is unseemly in our society to think ourselves better than others. Nobody likes a braggart, and nobody enjoys a Debbie Downer who constantly talks about how hard it was to do something like an instrument approach in worse than moderate turbulence.

This is why most of us never mention to non-flyers the work it took to get us in a position to fly at flight level 410 between those massive purple fire-spitting thunderstorms at dusk or any of our hundreds of other flying magic moments we experience from day to day. 

For this one moment, though, just between you and me, let’s admit that what we do is damn special and that not just anybody can do it.

We worked hard to be able to fly. Everybody, from student pilots to newly minted private pilots to 30,000-hour astronauts/airline pilots, went through some gritty before they got to experience the pretty.

There is no need to announce this fact of life to anybody, but next time I see you at the airport, I’ll give you a knowing nod and hope for one in return.