Cockpit clothing: Flight pants for GA pilots

Dispatch from my laundry room: I was having a wardrobe malfunction. No, not that kind of malfunction. Instead, with a year off racing due to mechanical malfunctions, I’ve gotten fat and lazy.

Well, fat anyway. 

Yes, sadly, all my flight shirts are bulging at their buttons. In fact, in the interim, I’ve stopped wearing my prized button-up shirts with their multitudes of pockets and embroidered logos altogether in favor of polo shirts, which I’ve come to love. Open at the neck, they’re comfortable and cool, and polos don’t care what size your stomach is, stretching to accommodate changes.

But polos have one major drawback. They lack pockets.

So, with Race 53 back in service, I starting thinking below the belt, so to speak. Maybe I could find some sort of pilot friendly pants with a multitude of pockets. I flirted with cargo pants, but polos with cargos have more of a cop than a pilot look, at least to my eye. What I needed was the bottom half of a flight suit. 

Did such a thing exist? 

Actually, a number of manufacturers make two-piece flight suits, including DRIFIRE, Gibson-Barnes, and Sola, all of which are popular with the air ambulance crowd.

But during my web search for “flight suit pants” I also discovered a Canadian company called Stephan/H, which specializes in making clothing for professional helicopter pilots, including flight jackets, flight suits, and flight pants. 

Looking somewhat like a modern fabric suit of armor, Stephan/H’s Rotor Flight Pants feature stretchy fabric at the knees, across the lower back, and inside the legs. The pants are designed to let you move comfortably and to let you sit on your tail comfortably for hours at a time.

The shell of the pants — which come in a choice of black, navy blue, red, royal blue, tan, and grey — are 61% nylon, 35% cotton, and 4% polyurethane creating a slightly stretchy, soft, breathable, and water repellent fabric. The inserts for motion are 97% nylon and 3% elastane for serious two-way stretch and abrasion resistance.

And, naturally, the pants feature a ton of pockets.

I dropped Stephen/H a note about flight testing a pair and they supplied me with a pair of pants to test fly for 90 days.

Pockets

Let’s talk more about those pockets, as it was pockets that sent me in search of flight suit pants in the first place. Rotor pants feature six primary pockets: Hand pockets at the hips, slim Velcro-secured cargo pockets above the knee — with the right pocket having a flashlight compartment and the left pocket large enough for an iPad mini — and zippered flap pockets on each lower leg. 

There’s also a two-compartment pen pocket on the lower left leg. Why the lower left? Because these pants are designed for chopper pilots. If you dare to take a hand off the controls in a helicopter, it pretty much needs to be your left one.

That said, I’m a lefty, and after decades of taking a pen out of the left sleeve of a flight jacket with my right hand and transferring it to my left, I couldn’t be happier to have my pen where I can grab it naturally and easily.

What’s missing, however, are back pockets. Many’s the time that I’ve reached for my wallet and grabbed my own ass before remembering that my wallet is now down in one of the pockets near my ankle. When I first placed it there it seemed a bit heavy, but I quickly adjusted, and I find it’s a super handy location, especially when hitting the McDonald’s drive-through on the way to the airport. You only need to observe any man at a drive-through trying to get his wallet out of conventional pants to appreciate this switch.

In fact, not having back pockets, at least for men, makes so much sense it begs the question of how did back pockets ever get started in the first place? Why sit on your wallet all day if you don’t have to? Sitting on nothing more than your tush all day is surprisingly comfortable in the cockpit.

In men’s, the pants run from XS to XXXL with a standard inseam of 32, plus shorts and talls, which either add or subtract two inches. Women’s pants run XS to XXL. The Stephen/H website has a detailed size chart that lets you figure out what size is right for you. And if you get it wrong, you’ve got 30 days to return or swap them.

The waist is surprisingly stretchy, fitting snug but not binding. The overall fit isn’t like skin-tight leather disco pants, but they’re not the least bit baggy, either.

And while they maintain a nicely tailored look, the pants never bind or restrict no matter how you move — and clambering in and out of many GA airplanes will put nice-fitting pants in jeopardy of a more serious wardrobe malfunction than the one I suffered, if you catch my meaning.

If you own or fly a Piper Cub, these are the pants for you, if for no other reason than for safe, and painless, entry and egress.

Wash and wear

I usually ignore washing instructions and just throw all the clothing in a warm water wash followed by a tumble dry, but these pants being loaners, and a mix of exotic fabrics, I decided to follow the directions: Turn inside out, machine wash in cold water, hang to dry, iron at a low temperature. 

Iron? Do we even own an iron? 

But my experience has been a good one. I give the pants a good shake once out of the washer, then throw them over my porch rail to dry, and I find the wrinkles are minimal — and those that do appear quickly smooth out once the pants are on my body, no low temperature ironing required.

Having a minimal useful load in Race 53, I’ve learned to travel exceedingly light. In past seasons that meant washing the one shirt I take with me each night, and washing my one pair of pants every several days. 

And you thought air racing was glamorous. 

Of course, washing pants in a hotel room sink is a bigger hassle than washing a shirt, so pants that can hold up well a few days between washes are preferred. Just to test them out, I flew in the pants four days in a row without washing them, and they still fit well and looked great.

Any negatives? Not really. The flap on the cargo pocket where I carry my cell phone doesn’t like to lie flat, but this is something I could probably fix it if I just bought an iron.

Cost

OK, so just what do these fabulous pants cost? Well, it’s a lucky thing you can sit comfortably in them, because you’re going to need to sit down. Rotor pants cost $275 a pair in Canadian dollars, which even with the currently favorable exchange rate, means American pilots will need to shell out about $225 for a pair, including fast shipping by DHL. With name brand jeans in the $50 range, and high quality “tactical” pants pushing $100, Rotor pants may be the most expensive pants you’ll ever buy. 

But, hey, they still cost less than a cross country flight, and they’re warrantied for life.

One worry I have is whether the weather will spoil my joy in these pants. The fabric is lighter and breathes better than a good quality pair of blue jeans — although it’s still comfortable enough on cold mornings — but at the same time they’re quite a bit thicker than the typical summer pants that most of us hot climate pilots wear. So, will the stretchy fabric prove to be well-ventilating, or not?

Even if the pants can’t hack the New Mexico summer heat, I like them enough that I’m buying a pair for the other three seasons. They’re that good, and they’re that good of a solution to my wardrobe malfunction.