Based on a review of my elementary school report cards and personal interviews with family members and lifelong friends, a uniformly accepted message becomes painfully clear. I could use some guidance.
From the age of nine until we moved to the sticks a few years later, I frequently rode the city bus. My usual trek took me from the suburbs on the East side of the Connecticut River into the not quite bustling capital city. Hartford is not famed for its excitement or rapid pace, but it was the home of a classic old-style YMCA where I was an enthusiastic member of the swimming and diving teams.
Returning home from a day out was always a terror. Not for me. For my mother. You see, when the bus door opened at my stop, I had the unfortunate habit of rushing down the steps, out the door, and doing a quick U-turn to run across the street. The same street that was filled with cars moving at normal speed. Nobody stops for a city bus and I was all go in those days. No waiting for me.
Amazingly enough, this almost always worked out. There was no tragedy. Sure, there were a few close calls, but somehow I always made it across the street unharmed.
This held true until that time when a gang of neighborhood kids were riding our bikes. And by “gang” I mean more than three but less than five kids. Some of the specifics escape me, because while my fellow riders stopped at the intersection across the street from my house, I continued on as usual. I have a vivid memory of rolling merrily across the pavement on my Schwinn, only a few dozen feet from my own driveway on a beautiful summer day.
My next memory involves waking up in the hospital as a doctor was sewing closed a large gash above my eye. He appeared to be miles away, while his hand zoomed in to fill my entire field of vision with each new stitch. It was like viewing the world in a huge convex mirror.
A concussion and a plethora of stitches was my reward for going it alone.
My downfall came at the bumper of a car. The driver apparently stopped, walked up to my front door, knocked, and addressed my mother when she answered.
“Do you have a little boy?” he asked. “Blonde, about this tall?”
“Yes, I do,” she answered.
“Is that him lying in the street?” That is when my poor mom’s attention shifted to my unconscious body, bleeding from a head wound.
My mother laughs when she tells that story now. Her reaction was different back then. Way different.
Clearly, I need some hand-holding. Someone to guide me through the perils of life. To help me make good decisions. To point out potential conflicts and keep me away from places I would be best to avoid.
Thankfully, I became a pilot where such a service is available 24/7. You know it as VFR Flight Following. I use it as a standard practice. Pretty much anytime I’m going over the horizon in an airplane, I’m taking ATC with me.
It’s just a flat-out good idea.
Not long ago I ferried a Cessna 152 from West Houston Airport in East Texas to my home field in Winter Haven, Florida. This journey of approximately 800 nautical miles starts with a departure from the non-towered West Houston Airport, followed by a quick turn to the east and the task of threading a path through the most complex Bravo airspace I’ve ever encountered. Two large airports constitute the heart of this airspace. George Bush Intercontinental lies to the North, and Houston Hobby to the South.
I suppose it is theoretically possible to navigate the airspace without talking to anyone on the radio, but I’m lazy by nature. Why would I put myself under that kind of stress and strain when I can simply dial in a frequency, wait my turn, then ask for someone at ATC to hold my hand and guide me through this mass of blue lines and altitude restrictions listed on the sectional chart?
It is with enthusiastic appreciation I find that not just one Air Traffic Controller comes to my aid, but a whole team jumps into the game to assist me. They hand me off as necessary from one to the next, always taking the time to give me the information I need to make the transition seamlessly. They point out traffic I may not have seen with the naked eye. They provide altitude and heading information I can put to immediate use.
They essentially take the place of my dear old mother, making sure I get across the street or the continent with a minimum of fuss and bother. Thank goodness for the fine folks at ATC and the amazingly easy to use VFR Flight Following.
Just yesterday I made a much shorter flight. Just 124 nautical miles out, then the same back again. Or, it could be 145 nautical miles each way. The distance and my time in the air was all predicated on whether or not a certain Restricted Area was hot or cold. Is it in use or dormant? Only ATC knows for sure, so I ask, and they stick with me throughout the whole flight.
What’s not to love?
I was flying from a non-towered field to a non-towered field, remaining in Golf and Echo airspace the whole way. There’s no requirement that I talk to anyone. But by dialing in Orlando Departure, Miami Center, and Palm Beach Approach as each hands me off to the next, my entire flight becomes easier, safer, and more enjoyable.
Yeah, it’s true. Even at this advanced age I could use some hand-holding. Thank goodness that level of personalized service isn’t just available to me, it’s actually encouraged.
And so, my adventures in the air and on the ground continue. I hope yours will, too.
We start out in life needing 100% hand-holding, reach a point where the hand is an insult, and rejected out of hand, and eventually we rreturn to needing and, yes, wanting those helping hands.
Hi, I can vouch for the great assistance atc gave myself whilst flying between Biggin Hill UK and Malta. The met info I picked up in northern France was very inaccurate and finding myself in a severe frontal system as a consequence of this. I contacted the local atc who relayed my message to Dijon (then a Nato base ) who then contacted me and reassured me that all would be well if I obeyed all their instructions ( + – 10ft, + – 1 degree )
I had just passed the IMC rating, a couple of notches down from an instrument rating. I was near alot of high ground and they gave me precise steers to avoid these. After an hour of guidance I was talked down into Dijon airfield breaking cloud at 50ft, phew !
That was stressful but satisfying.
Regards
Flight following is not there to regulate us but is another tool to help us coordinate with each other through the services of our ATC folks. It doesn’t have to be used, and some don’t, but a lot do make use of the service and reap its benefits.
Flight following doesn’t limit our abilities to enjoy our time in the air, but it does enhance our safety. I’ve found controllers more amenable to requests if I’ve been talking to them for a while rather than just popping up on frequency with the same request. Occasionally I’ve even been able to provide some small assistance to others as well as the controllers relaying messages or testing standby transmitters.
Flight following brings me almost all the benefits of IFR flight plans without the formality of reporting points, expect further clearance at ????, and other such significant times. I started flying almost 51 years ago (in 4 months) and have enjoyed the benefits of VFR Flight Following since it first became available. No one forces me to use it, but no one forces me to buy life insurance either. Still, I do both.
Remind me how you got a pilot’s license without being able to read a sectional? Maybe you should exercise a bit of self preservation. I bet you don’t bother with a weather briefing as well?
Bruce – you clearly missed the author’s message. He probably knows the charts better than you. Just sayin’…
One way to get uninterrupted “advice” from ATC is to operate on an IFR Flight Plan (even in perfect weather). Services include: clearances and radar vectors to avoid other IFR aircraft, restricted airspace (including ‘pop up’ TFRs), terrain, known severe weather, emergency assistance, and many other services that the Controller may be able to provide (e.g. advisories of VFR traffic).
I’m IFR rated, but never file when flying VFR because flying isn’t only about getting from point A to point B for me. I tend to wander off the straight line path between way points because I see something interesting over there, or I wonder if there is workable lift along that ridgeline (even when flying SEL I think about gliding options). That sort of meandering tends to drive ATC nuts. It is also what makes flying enjoyable for me. For this reason, I often monitor ATC without asking for flight following when my meandering is in low traffic density and uncomplicated airspace. Filing IFR and/or using Flight Following are great aids when dealing with a complicated flight environments, or focusing on getting to a destination, but can be a real joy killer when meandering is what the flight is all about. Fortunately for me, most of my flights are all about whimsical exploration of the aerial environment, even when I’m on a long cross country flight. Sometimes meandering and ATC come together. On a return flight from Oshkosh to Washington State decades ago (before GPS) I was wandering around South Dakota looking for the Chief Crazy Horse memorial. I couldn’t find it, so I called Ellsworth Air force Base and asked if they could give me radar vectors to the site. They chuckled and agreed, and son I was looking down at the very early stages of this Mountain top sculpture. Once I’d had my fill, I cancelled flight following and went about my merry way, often well below altitudes where I could reliably maintain radio contact with ATC. It was a great trip even without hands holding the whole way.
Hi, Jamie.
In principle, I have no argument with you. But in practice, it is unwise to put your faith entirely in a system of flight following that can, and often does, turn a fella loose in the middle of some of the most complex airspace that lawyers could ever devise for torture.
The words ‘service terminated’ at the wrong moment could send your three mile a minute plane crashing into a minefield of more violations and airspace incursions than the confusing bells and whistles of a pinball machine. Here is another point.
Most proficient instrument pilots would find compliance in that scenario difficult, or impossible. Instrument flight is, in reality, much easier to negotiate because of its commensurate hand holding than VFR flight in this day and age could ever be.
Today, the average plane is better equipped, and the pilot better trained, than ever before. The march of time has no claim that could compete with the march of encroaching airspace. I look into a profundity of newly formed obstacles to pleasant navigation.
And despite having that better equipment, things like global positioning, an ELT and an encoding transponder, and despite being a former professional pilot, I am prohibited from entering the same airspace as a no-radio Cub, without adding the new ADSB.
Perhaps not in practice, yet, but in theory, I can be hauled into court pending certificate action for landing at a grass airfield that is within 30nm of a major airport that is itself the cause of a lateral limit of a class-B veil, even squawking 1200 with encoded altitude.
This is not progress. This is insanity. If airplanes can only be driven like buses through a war zone, where has the fun and excitement of flying gone? Improvements in technology should make it easier to exercise our rights, not justify more prohibitions.
I realize I have gone far afield off your intent, but the frustration to regulation mounts. These people will not be satisfied until the birds are grounded. I do not want my plane to be a flying avionics shop, with the autopilot warning me not to touch anything.
Oh and by the way, have you ever tried just negotiating your own touch screen iPad in turbulence, or tried to find a frequency on ForeFlight while holding an altitude, especially if that frequency is not posted as in other MOAs and restricted areas?
Just kill me now, don’t make me suffer more of this!
It is amazing how many of my flying friends don’t want to talk to ATC. Some are scared, some don’t want the hassle of having to pay attention for a call, and some just don’t like big brother watching them (even though that’s happening anyway). In my 51st year of flying and with the Wright Brothers Award on my wall, there was a lot of hand holding along the way. But, I enjoyed every minute of it…
Gordon W. Lester
Corpus Christi, Texas.
Grand article! I’m an absolute believer in VFR flight following. ATC is staffed with extremely competent people who are quick to be of assistance. I agree that a bit of “hand holding” is very welcome, particularly in high traffic area environments.
Another excellent article, Jamie! I love flight following, I can hear the music to “You”ll never walk alone” when ever I ask for their help.
VFR, 3300 hours here. Do at least 1 trip across the country a year. Never use FF, terminate right after transitioning. Why? To me its a distraction that runs counter to why I am up there in the first place. I don’t feel any safer having traffic called out, I trust myself. Learned to fly in LA airspace so those scary blue and magenta lines do not seem very scary.
Flying is a tiny glimpse of Zen: to be solely reliant on one’s self, to focus on the task at hand completely. FF is an intrusion to that sense of Zen.
I’m with Hank on this. If I need help in a real hurry I can dial up Guard. If I have a moment, I can look up the local Approach freq quickly on my EFB. I do like ADS-B for traffic and weather.
I need Bernoulli to fly, Marconi is an option.
But while we are talking about radios, let me bring up a pet peeve. Syllables. Fewer are better. On a busy CTAF freq cut your call sign or ID down to the minimum demanded by the situation.
Rallye One, out.
“…I can dial up guard…” When a call comes through on Guard all of the facilities that monitor guard will try to answer. This includes towers, centers, approach controls , flight service and maybe other pilots. You may not be able to hear some of them but they will be talking. There will be a period of time while it is sorted out which facility can help you. Then they have to find you. In the meantime your blown engine has sprayed oil all over the windshield or you are lost. You are scared and your shaking fingers can’t find the frequency page on your tablet. With flight following you are already on the frequency that can give you help and air traffic control knows exactly where you are. How is this a problem for you?
I don’t use it on local flights but for cross countries I want all the potential help I can get. Flight Following has helped me avoid unpublished sports arena TFR’s and to find traffic in the past. And because I happened to be on the frequency I was once able to help narrow down an ELT signal. Maybe it was somebody that didn’t want flight following.
A retired air traffic controller.
FF is another layer of protection. I’d rather have it and not necessarily need it. Even with ADS-B. Get Zen with a good yoga course. Namaste.