Playing in the key of A, B, C, D, E, and G

Like so many pilots and CFIs, I’m often asked questions about aviation, posed by folks who know little about it.

More often than not those curious individuals have misunderstandings about the art and science of flight that have kept them from pursuing the option of learning to fly.

“It costs a fortune,” they say. And they believe it.

True, aviation is expensive. But it doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive. In many ways it’s on a par with other glitzy hobbies, like sailing or golf, if you’ll pardon the pun.

“I can’t fly because I’m afraid of heights.”

When I reveal that I, too, have a fear of heights they find the admission to be confusing.

“But how can you fly thousands of feet in the air if you’re afraid of heights,” they counter. “I don’t know,” I answer truthfully.

It just doesn’t bother me when I’m flying. You won’t find me on the balcony of a high-rise hotel, though. At cruising altitude I’m fine. On top of an extension ladder, I’m not.

In truth, most of the arguments I hear from folks who think piloting is beyond their potential are based on ignorance and fear. Very few have much validity in the real world.

As those of us who fly know, if you want to fly you probably can. The real question is, will you try?

Over the years I’ve done my best to craft a series of discussion points to put these curious onlookers at ease. It’s obvious they want to give it a whirl.

One day many years ago, I hit on a new approach. I have no idea where it came from. Not exactly. But this line of reasoning has worked well in quite a few conversations over the years. Perhaps it will be of use to you, as well. So, in the spirit of generosity and gracious gift giving, I will share it with you now.

Flying is in many ways very much like playing a musical instrument. You can learn the basics fairly quickly. You can play. Your new musical skills might even impress your friends.

But no matter how proficient you get, no matter how knowledgeable you become, you will never be fully satisfied with your level of skill. You’ll spend the rest of your life trying to be just a little bit better, smoother, more precise. Even the best of the best, folks like Eric Clapton, Yo-Yo Ma, Bob Hoover, and Sean Tucker, continue to put effort into improving their abilities.

I know what you’re thinking. That’s stupid. Learning to fly is nothing like learning to play a musical instrument. And maybe you’re right, from your perspective. But I’ve been playing music far longer than I’ve been flying and I see the parallel quite clearly.

It started like this. While toiling away in the hot sun at my first CFI job, I began to treat my students like individuals rather than just the 10 a.m. to noon slot on my schedule. I got to know them. Not just their name. I began posing questions that would give me insight into their life outside the airport. The idea was that I could use that information to help them through the stickier parts of their flight training by relating what we were doing to some other facet of their lives.

Increasingly, and surprisingly, I found that a considerable percentage of my students also played a musical instrument. Initially, I suspected I was reading into the situation. After all, becoming a professional pilot was a career change for me. I was 30 years old when I made the leap from my previous career to the one I continue to labor at today.

My first career? I was a professional musician. My band was popular enough and ambitious enough to make an album. We relocated to New York City, rubbed elbows with a whole assortment of twangy, jangly, melody-centric people, then we broke up.

It’s a very common story. Exciting, depressing, hard, fun, and always anxiety inducing, but it was quite a ride while it lasted. I’m glad I took that path for as long as I did.

Back to the point of this story: I began to advise my students to relate their flight instruction travails to their musical experience. When they had difficulty perfecting a maneuver, or at least honing it to meet the expectations of the Practical Test Standard (that’s the document that preceded the Airman Certification Standard, currently in use), I would ask them to tell me about a challenge they had musically.

Sometime it was learning and practicing scales on the piano, or struggling to play a clean F chord on the guitar, or nailing the reed to mouthpiece position on the saxophone. The result might be hand cramps from the piano, a clunky partial set of notes from the guitar, or a honking mess of bleating sounds coming from the sax the player hoped would be so smooth and soulful.

But they all got over those issues. And by recognizing that persistence was the key in both arenas, they improved their flying, too.

Doing anything new is hard. And yes, the old adage tends to be true. Practice does make perfect. Well, better anyway. So, let’s put that last bounced landing behind us, configure the airplane appropriately as we round the pattern, and focus on our pitch, power, airspeed, and altitude.

Remember to relax. We’re having fun here, right?

As we round out shift your eyes down to the far end of the runway. It’s easier to gauge your height above the ground when looking into the distance. Close the throttle as we come over the fence and ease the elevator back to arrest your sink rate. Come down slowly holding the nosewheel off the ground until…squeak! Great work!

Now, keep flying the airplane as the nosewheel settles to the runway. Slow yourself with aerodynamic braking or mechanical brakes. Let’s exit the runway at the next taxiway. Well done!

Now seriously, was that all that much different than your music teacher walking you through a challenging passage? Flying is an awful lot like playing a musical instrument. In both cases, when you do it well, your heart just sings.