Stay in your lane

As I wander through my fourth decade as a certificated flight instructor, I have absolutely no problem admitting that I don’t understand the formula for lift.

It’s a complete mystery to me.

In fact, to this point in my life and my career I have not once gotten into a discussion on the topic with someone who truly understood that jumble of letters and numbers.

That is not to say I don’t think the formula is correct or that thousands upon thousands of folks around the globe don’t understand it well enough to debate it at length. They’re engineers. That’s their specialty.

I, on the other hand, am a pilot. I just fly the damn thing.

There is no more shame in this lack of understanding on my part than there is on the division of duties that keeps an engineer chained to a desk or a computer screen while CFIs like me get to go fly aircraft on sunny days. Neither of us is required to have the skills or knowledge of the other. We simply have to understand what we are responsible for and shoulder that burden.

Except, and this is important as I see it, taking on those responsibilities is not a burden for most of us. It’s a gift. An opportunity. We tend to seek out work that challenges us. Activities that periodically push us to the point of focused concentration in an effort to avoid disaster, yet also offer us the prideful moments that come from experiencing the joy found when achieving our own individual success.

To the public, pilots are often perceived as wild risk takers who blast their way through life with the reckless abandon of Errol Flynn in his prime — without quite as many drug- and alcohol-fueled binges, or course.

Engineers are characterized as nerdy dweebs wearing pocket-protectors and thick glasses who went to their senior prom with a cousin, if they went at all.

Neither of these visions are accurate. They’re caricatures of individuals based on a pointlessly generalized understanding of a trait or assumption about a small group, which is then applied wholesale to an entire classification of folks.

That’s just plain dumb.

While I don’t understand the formula for lift, or plenty of other mathematical equations, theories, postulations, and projections, I am reasonably good at determining the airworthiness of an airplane. I know how to get it up and running.

If the conditions are right, I can guide it out to a runway, pour the coals to it, and entice it to fly.

When the Hobbs meter has ticked over a sufficient number of tenths, and the purpose of the flight I initiated has been achieved, I have found the wherewithal to put that airplane back down on a runway again in such a way that my student and I can walk away unscathed and the airplane can be used again.

That sounds like a pretty successful endeavor to me. I take pride in having learned and practiced enough that I can do those things on a fairly regular basis.

Even better, I have learned to gather information and make decisions in such a way that to this point in my career I haven’t bent a piece of metal or torn a bolt of fabric while engaged in flight.

I’m comfortable staying in my lane. A long, focused, highly specific lane that includes a relatively small number of men and women who enjoy similar challenges and activities. It is not the only lane available, however. It’s just the one I choose to operate in.

The highway I’m on has multiple lanes, all headed in the same direction, each with its own unique characteristics that deserve understanding and respect. Interstate 95 ranges from two to eight lanes per side, depending on the specific location.

In Houston, Interstate 10 balloons up to as many as 26 lanes, a true whopper of a roadway.

Yet, the logic of the road doesn’t go out the window as the lane count goes up. Slower traffic stays to the right. Vehicles going fast enough to pass shift to the left, then return to the right lanes if no slower traffic blocks their path. And through traffic that’s flowing toward distant locations sticks to the center lanes.

If everyone understands their status and accepts the responsibility to act in a predictable, safe manner, all is well. If however, just one or two buttheads decide to drive aggressively, without regard for their own safety or the safety of others, or even the established purpose of the various lanes available, mayhem will result.

In the long run, it’s about respect. Respect for ourselves and our talents. Respect for others and their right to pursue their own goals without undue impediment from us as we pursue our own. This is as true on the highways of America as it is on the ramps, taxiways, and runways our aeronautical brothers and sisters operate from.

The doctor in a 2023 turbocharged Cirrus doesn’t get the right of way over a student pilot in a 1950s trainer simply because the aircraft is more impressive. There are rules about this sort of thing. We would do well to stay in our lane, follow the rules, and respect those who share the skies and the airport facilities with us.

One of the greatest thrills I’ve ever gotten in my flying career has been when I fly in an anemic little fabric-covered steel frame aircraft with meager horsepower and oodles of drag. Sharing the ride with me have been pilots who usually fly widebody turbine powered behemoths, or fighter jets, and at least a couple had their eyes on machines that would fly them into space. But in that little flivver, they laughed and sang and loved every minute of the experience. Because they were smart enough to enjoy the lane they were in, with the machine they’d chosen, for the time they were in it.

It’s really that simple. So, I stay in my lane, whichever lane that might be at the moment. And I love it here.