Questions from the Cockpit: Ercoupe claustrophobia

My friend Tom called the other night and startled me with a question: “Hey, have you ever heard of anyone having an attack of claustrophobia in an Ercoupe?”

The question stunned me. How could anyone get claustrophobia in a low-wing airplane with a bubble canopy?

Well, it turned out that he had set out to take a fellow pilot for a ride in his Ercoupe, and right after getting in, the other pilot said he needed to get out. Right. Now.

Apparently, although this had never happened to the other pilot in any other plane, he had an overwhelming attack of, well, claustrophobia and Tom wanted to know if I’d ever heard of that happening before.

I hadn’t and couldn’t imagine why it would.

We kicked it around a bit. Yeah, the cabin isn’t that wide, but it’s wider than a 150. Yeah, the instrument panel is sort of close, but that’s true of a lot of airplanes…and so on and so forth. We were both left scratching our heads.

All GA cockpits are snug by the measuring tape, especially when compared to, say, cars.

On the tight end, the Cessna 150’s crew compartment is 38 inches wide. 172s run 40. Bonanzas 42. The tight-feeling Mooney M20 is actually 43.5 and the “wide body” Cirrus, at 49 inches, is still only the same width as a high-end computer monitor. The Ercoupe isn’t the worst, but it is on the lean side, at 39 inches.

But inches aside, other factors can apparently affect the feel of the space, because the very next day Tom shared a rather long text from the unfortunate victim of the Ercoupe claustrophobia incident.

The other pilot was sufficiently rattled by the experience that he researched it and it turns out that Ercoupe Claustrophobia is a thing. Some of the highlights of his research argue that, while the visibility is excellent, the space can nevertheless feel confining because:

• The cockpit is narrow, with bench seating, and because you don’t have your own seat, you feel closer to the other occupant.
• The lack of rudder pedals makes the cockpit unplane-like for some pilots.
• The sliding canopy, even though all “glass,” has the effect of making the space inside feel smaller to some people, especially because it curves inward at the top, giving a very close feel, and provides minimal headroom.
• The canopy can make it stuffy on a sunny day.
• Some people apparently experience anxiety or claustrophobia when they can’t easily open a door to “escape,” and of course, the Coupe has no door. You are up to your neck in fuselage, leading to the perception — for some — of being stuck.

All these combined can cause a feeling of being “boxed in” or “trapped.”

I could kind of see some of it, but I still couldn’t really get my head and heart around it.

How could anyone be unhappy in the beloved cockpit of my favorite airplane? To me it was an endlessly expansive space with an amazing view of the world. I have well over 1,000 hours in them.

It nagged at my mind, and I kept revisiting the concept over the passing days, trying to understand. To no avail.

But within a few weeks, I’d have an experience that gave me perspective. And not the kind of experience you expect, but, still, one that gave me insight. But to understand that, I have to give you some background.

I haven’t written about this yet — and may never in any great detail because the experience was sufficiently hard on my soul that I have no desire to relive it — but after years of flying an Ercoupe, my family lost Race 53, known affectionately as “Tessie” to us. Tess was technically my mother’s airplane, although I was the one who flew her the most, and I (foolishly, it would turn out) put thousands of dollars of my own money into repairs and upgrades over the years, assuming she would be mine someday.

Mom passed away in the winter of 2023 after a damn good run. She was 98, had an amazing life, and while on a two-year decline, was more-or-less “with it” right up to the end.

Over the course of her long life she did nearly all that she ever wanted to do. She wrote thousands of articles, a dozen books, lectured internationally, and traveled widely.

I think the only thing she missed out on, that I know she wanted to do, was to “compete” in the Senior Olympics at age 100. She figured that all the competition would be dead by then and she’d make a clean sweep of the Gold Medals just by limping onto the field.

In fact, she pretty much accomplished that at age 97, including taking a Gold in the javelin event, even though her throw was so bad and so short that the back end of the spear nearly stubbed her toe. I thought I would die of embarrassment.

Until person, after person, after person came up to me afterward to say how inspired they were by my mom, that she would put herself out there at her age, and how lucky I was, etc., etc. Then I nearly did die of embarrassment. Embarrassment over being embarrassed by mom, rather than proud of her. It was a good learning and growing moment for me.

As penance, I ordered Team 98 shirts for the whole family, and continued to help mom with frisbee toss practice at the hangar by running after errant plastic discs and returning them to her, round after round.

Sadly, she didn’t make it to the next Olympics, so we sent her on to the next world in her Team 98 shirt.

But what no one foresaw was that, Viking Queen-style, she would take her airplane with her, at least metaphorically. Mom died slowly over a period of several months, and the medical bills bankrupted her estate completely. Her antique glass collection, her books, her jewelry, and the “family” airplane all had to go on the chopping block to pay her final bills.

It’s a long, complicated, and embittering story, but I couldn’t purchase Tess. So I lost two ladies that I loved at the same time.

Then came the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). Oh, no, don’t get me wrong. It didn’t do anything to mom’s estate. It is just the next chapter in this saga.

It had refurbished a different Ercoupe a year before for its annual sweepstakes, but for some unaccountable reason, the person who won it chose the cash instead, leaving EAA to feature the ‘Coupe in a second-round sweeps.

Now planeless, and having relocated to the Northeast to pursue an awesome job opportunity (I had been turning down awesome job opportunities for several years as mom’s doctors advised against relocating her as her mental and physical health slowly declined), I bought tickets for the “second chance” Ercoupe that my friend Lisa had already named Bluebird.

I was so convinced that I would win it — surely the universe would correct such a grievous injury as the one I had sustained — that I even paid to be on the hangar waiting list at a nearby airport.

The night EAA drew the winning ticket I was on Facebook waiting to see my name come up. It didn’t. My friend Tom’s name came up instead.

Of course, he wasn’t my friend then. He was just the lucky SOB that somehow won “my” airplane.

On reflection, and bourbon neat, I realized that winning things isn’t the kind of luck I have. Which is not to say that I’m not lucky. I am very lucky, but it’s the kind of luck that I’ve had to make for myself.

So I set out to get lucky, used my journalism and internet skills to find Tom, and reached out with a message of “Hey, congrats, and if you ever want to get rid of that thing, please call me first.”

That was the start of a great friendship. Over the last half year or so, Tom has reached out to me with ‘Coupe questions, and to share his adventures with Bluebird. (I actually don’t know what name, if any, he’s given his lucky airplane.)

I had been too busy at my new job to miss flying too much at first, but once aviation is in your blood, after the “loss” of Bluebird, I found myself spending a lot of free time looking at classified ads for Ercoupes. But old airplanes take a lot of work and money to put right. I didn’t know if I really wanted to go through that process again.

One of the things that excited me about the EAA bird was that it was a total ground-up refurb.

Not sure what to do, I flew a Sling, which I’ve always lusted after, but it wasn’t a good fit for me. I started aerobatic training, and while discovering the edges of the aerodynamic envelope has been good for both my mind and my adrenal glands, I haven’t been able to bond with the airplane. And so it went, I was working full time in aviation… but was largely on the ground, and it chaffed a bit.

Then, one Monday night, out of the blue, I got a text from Tess’s new owner. Tess was for sale, was I interested? Four days later she was literally and truly mine.

Eighteen days after that text, I was landing her at my new home airport in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and it only took that long to get her “home” because I needed to finish up a CFI ground school that I was teaching.

Anyway, the point of that rather long literary detour is that Tom’s call came right in the middle of my re-purchase of Tess. It was after the sale closed, but before I flew out to the southwest on a commercial jet to pick her up and fly her (somewhat more slowly) back “home” to the Northeast. So the question was still on my mind.

And, after that long forced separation, the first time I slipped back into Tess’s cockpit I’ve never felt more comfortable, more secure, or more at home in my life. How on earth could anyone get claustrophobic in such a welcoming environment?

But the more I thought about it, over 17.6 hours on the Hobbs flying east, the more I could see that it comes down to how you relate to space.

The cockpit (sorry, it just really isn’t a flight deck, no matter what the FAA says) of an Ercoupe isn’t very large. There are no doors in the normal sense. You step down into it. And you don’t really sit in this airplane, so much as strap in on and wear it. That’s what I always liked about it. Using the old colloquialism, I’m as snug as a bug in a rug in that airplane.

Which is all good and fine, if you are snug-loving. But if you’re somewhere on the claustrophobia spectrum, being as snug as a bug in a rug must fall somewhere between mildly disconcerting and pure, living hell.