Calgary, January 2020
In aviation there is a saying that “it is better to be on the ground, wishing to be flying than to be flying, wishing to be on the ground.” Another saying defines a superior pilot as a person who is using his superior judgement so that he does not have to use his superior skills. Also, they say that “if time to spare, go by air.” I can confirm that all of those sayings are correct; I have tested them myself. The fact that by the time that I stopped flying I ended up with exactly the same number of takeoffs and landings, and no broken airplane does not indicate my superior judgement, but may indicate an adequate level of skill, helped by good luck.
The first time my inferior judgement caused me to wish that I was on the ground while flying happened when I was a new private pilot with about 200 hours of flight time. At that time, I was working for a computer company in Ottawa and I did a lot of business travel. My bad idea was to combine work and pleasure and my inferior judgement was demonstrated by using my airplane for that. On that particular trip I had to teach a one-week course in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which would require about 5 hours of flying in my old Cessna 140. Being keen to add 10 more hours to my flight time, on a beautiful Sunday in March, 1980, I took off. The flight there, while challenging in navigation (no GPS at that time) went OK. The problem was that the beautiful weather did not last. By the end of the course on Friday the weather was outright lousy and the forecast for Saturday was no better. So, after being stuck all of Saturday around the airport (if time to spare, go by air), thankfully Sunday was a better day and I took off for a flight back to Ottawa. The forecast was good, but after about one hour of flying I came over a low overcast. No problem; I will fly above it and hopefully it is just a local patch. But it was not a local patch, and the overcast was getting trickier. I contacted the Syracuse Tower and they told me that the airport is under solid cloud cover. At that moment I was wishing very much to be on the ground. I was on the wrong site of the overcast and I had no idea how to get out of it. The Syracuse air traffic controller solved the problem by directing me to the nearest clear weather airport. By then it was late Sunday afternoon, and even though I went by air, I did not have time to spare. I was scheduled to teach another course on Monday morning in Ottawa. Continuing to fly my plane was not an option since I had enough of it for a day, so by combining busses and airliners, and travelling the whole night, I had made it on time for work. Unfortunately, the plane was still at the other airport, therefore the next weekend I had to retrieve it. Flying back was another horror story; I lost the whole electric system at night and did an unannounced landing at the Ottawa International airport, but that whole fiasco taught me a valuable lesson: never ever combine business and recreational flying, and never ever rely on recreational flying to meet a fixed schedule.
Nevertheless, this fiasco taught me another lesson. It is OK to fly above clouds (VFR on the top, as it is known in aviation) providing that three conditions are satisfied: the clouds do not go too high, the destination airport has guaranteed good weather, and it has a navigation aid like VOR to enable finding it. I have put this lesson into a good use on a flight from Calgary to Ottawa, in the same old Cessna 140. The flight took two days and I stayed overnight in Duluth, Minnesota. On arrival in Duluth late in the afternoon the weather was good, and in the morning, there was ground fog with sun shining through. I waited for the fog to dissipate, as it is supposed to do, but instead it was getting ticker. The call to the weather office revealed that a big storm is coming and will stay in the area longer than I was prepared to wait. The good news was that the destination airport was clear. So, after a hurried pre-flight inspection I taxied to the runway, which was hard to find in the fog. Full power, and as soon as the plane lifted, the world disappeared into a white gloom, but soon I was in blue sunshine. I set up the course to the destination airport and for two hours I flew above the overcast until my radio picked up the expected VOR signal. Apparently, Duluth is known as the fog capital of the US.
This flight taught me another lesson: long cross-country flights in planes equipped for VFR only flying are dangerous, and those planes are not really meant to be a means of transportation. They are more like sports equipment. Just like skis are used for skiing and not for going from point A to B, small planes are used for flying, and going from point A to B is just an excuse to justify it. Many times, I have flown to a close by airport, had a coffee in the club house and then flew back. There was no reason to go there other than flying. However, this type of flying is equivalent to skiing just green runs, and I wanted an equivalent of skiing black diamond runs. Aviation does have such an equivalent; it is called “aerobatics”, and I have enthusiastically engaged in it.
Having a lot of flight time and extensive experience does not guarantee superior judgement. The last time I was wishing to be on the ground while flying was towards the end of my aerobatics ambitions, when I had well over 1000 hours of flight time and was returning from an aerobatic training camp at the Rocky Mountain House, about a 45-minute flight from Springbank airport. Normally it is a pleasant, easy flight, but not on that day. The weather at the Rocky Mountain House was marginal, but Springbank was VFR, so I thought I should be OK. Shortly after takeoff I got above a low overcast and was hoping to be able to continue like that all the way, but after about 20 minutes I had to admit defeat. The clouds were getting higher and thicker, forcing me to turn back, but the 180-degree turn gave me a nasty surprise. The clouds in that direction were just as thick, blocking my return. The only course I could fly was east, away from the mountains, but being over featureless terrain in poor visibility, I was promptly lost. At that moment I wished very much to be on the ground. What saved the day was GPS, which kept pointing back to the airport and when, after long crisscrossing between clouds I finally saw the runway, it was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.
What was the lesson from that flight? It confirmed that aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous but is terribly unforgiving. The aircraft does not care if you are lost or if you do not know what to do and if you are terrified. It was you who got yourself into the situation and you yourself had to get out of it. In flying, just like in life, you are on your own.