The Tiniest Pilot that Could

I’m 17 hours into my flight training, and I want to tell you all about it.

My first lesson? Went amazingly. I was on cloud nine, at 3,500 feet in the air, soaring like a bird and gliding my little plane around New Jersey feeling on top of the world. My instructor took over so that I could take as many pictures as I could store on my limited phone space, and I practiced maneuvers like 360 turns around a point, S turns, and gradual inclines and banks. He was impressed, saying that I was a “natural flyer” and that I’d probably be able to solo in about 9 hours of lessons.

I left with stars in my eyes and my spirit couldn’t have been lifted more. It was exhilarating, especially for a girl who was once terrified to fly in any plane, let alone fly one.

Well it’s been 17 hours since that first magical day and no, I still have not solo’d in my Cessan 172.

What? Why not?

Let me tell you about a little something called the wall. No, not THAT wall.

The wall for me is a psychological barrier which interferes with your ability to push past any kind of mental insecurity or external pressure to perform ahead of others; the wall appears when you least expect it but really it’s very predictable. It’ll occur right as soon as you start something that you’re naturally good at and experience a small amount of difficulty doing it, leading you to believe that it was a lie and you’re actually not cut out for this.

It happens to perfectionists, of which I’m definitely guilty of. I have an ID card and everything.

I grew up thinking that if I wasn’t terrific at something, then I shouldn’t even try to do it at all. This created a pattern in which I would enthusiastically try something, show a lot of potential, but then at the first sign of struggle I would hit that dang wall and think “maybe this isn’t for me.” Rather than push through and enjoy the struggle as much as the victory of being naturally talented, I would just… quit.

My mom almost let me quit piano when I was in third grade, but decided instead to make me play for one more year. “After one year, then you can do whatever you want to. But you have talent and I know you can get through this plateau.” I begrudgingly agreed, because I had no other choice.

Of course, a year later, I fell in love with playing piano, enjoying it for about seven more years before I actually became burnt out from playing. I performed in festivals, winning the highest scores, and actually playing just because I wanted to. Don’t you hate it when your mom turns out to be right?

Would this be similar? I thought, as I attempted steep turns and power off stalls in my Cessna on my fourth lesson in the sky.

My instructor Sandy had been incredibly encouraging and enthusiastic about my supposed prodigy status of pilot, and was expecting nothing more than greatness as we took to the clouds. But that expectation created a mental shut down, since I actually didn’t know what I was doing— I was just instinctively doing what I thought would work. I couldn’t repeat anything that I did in past lessons; I didn’t know why what I did worked. He told me to make a 360 turn around a tree and maintain altitude… so I did. But I couldn’t tell you how.

My mind is out to sabotage me. Rude.

On hour four or five, we were practicing steep turns and power out stalls. In retrospect, I should have given myself a break, because those are kinda tricky, especially after only a couple of lessons. But no, I had the highest expectations of my talents, and thought “I can do this. I should be able to do this. Wait… why can’t I DO THIS?”

Power off stalls are something of a counter intuitive maneuver. You’re up in the sky, you’re in slow flight (a type of flying that mimics the conditions of a landing), and you pull the throttle completely out. So no power, nothing coming out of the engine, no sounds coming from the plane. You’re gliding now, and when you don’t have power you lose altitude.

So the natural tendency, is to raise the nose up by pulling back on the yolk.

This creates an effect at a certain speed, different for every aircraft, when the plane shudders and loses the lift it had when there was power pushing the plane forward. You will hear a high pitched buzzing sound, and then the plane will suddenly drop a bit. The first time I did this, it was terrifying. Because to practice a stall recovery, you have to physically force the plane to get into this unnatural position that you’d never do on purpose if it was a normal flight.

As soon as the plane is about to lose lift, the correct procedure is to push on the throttle and lower the nose while maintaining the altitude. If you don’t do this correctly, there’s a possibility of putting your plane into a spin, which is like nosediving into the ground. Stalls are not so dangerous, but spins? Yeah, you don’t want to get into those.

Shit that’s Scary.

Yes. And no. If you understand that a stall just means losing lift for a few seconds, not falling dramatically from the sky, then it’s not as scary. But on my first attempt I didn’t know this at all. I thought that if I made a mistake I would crash the plane immediately.

When I failed to do the stall properly after five tries, I felt myself tense with frustration and defeat. What was I even doing here? Was I actually natural at flying or was that something my instructor was saying to make me feel better? Should I just quit now before I spend all my money on these lessons?

“Let’s just go back to the airport,” I heard him say, and felt like a huge failure.

I felt my eyes well up with tears and struggled to push them back. I don’t like being adequate at anything, and the pressure of the costs, the expectation that I put on myself to be great, the responsibility of controlling an aircraft that could potentially crash into the trees or ground…. it suddenly collected and expressed itself through the corners of my eyeballs.

I also would have rather died than have anyone seem me cry about this; just what I need, an image of a girl crying because she’s not cut out to be a pilot. It would reinforce all the stereotypes about women being too emotional to handle the responsibility, it would make me seem weak.

Take a freaking chill pill

I so much wanted to prove to the world and myself that I was capable of something I never dreamed of before, that I had what it takes to fly on my own, but in that moment I felt like an imposter.

“I don’t know, maybe I don’t need to do this,” I said in the plane, through my $600 headphones that I had purchased three weeks prior.

My instructor, rightfully so, became visibly annoyed with me.

“Are you actually kidding me right now?” he said as I gritted my teeth and felt my head become lighter.

“I don’t know, I thought I could do this but I’m clearly not as good as you think I am.”

That’s when he paused, and told me that I was one of the best students he’s taught, and that if I didn’t continue flying that would be doing a disservice to myself.

“Seriously,” he said. “You’re way too hard on yourself. Relax. You’re a better flyer when you’re just enjoying it.”

After four lessons I was already telling myself that I had failed, rather than accept that there will be hard days to balance out the effortless ones. Turbulence is something that you need to experience a lot of before you feel like you can move with it, rather than always fight it. Maneuvers need to be explained, practiced, explained, practiced, and practiced again and again until you’re doing it without thinking. Being in the sky is different every time, and if you’re not consistent with your training, it’s very easy to lose that muscle memory. I was only flying once maybe twice a week, and expecting to be perfect every time. That’s silly, right? But after handing over my credit card and seeing the damage every lesson, it’s understandable. I want to be good at this, but I actually NEED to be good at this for the time and money to be worth it.

tell me I’m pretty

Don’t tell me I’m pretty. Tell me I’m talented.

You have to have regular conversation with yourself about why you are doing this, and stay focused on the goal.

Keep telling yourself that you are made for this, tell yourself you deserve this, tell yourself anything you need to hear to keep going and push through the difficult days. There will be difficult days, but they will be rewarded with that “click” of an epiphany when you physically understand why your altitude keeps dropping, when you intellectually understand that the plane always wants to stay in the air and you don’t need to worry so much about crashing, even when the engine stops working. Tell yourself that everyone goes through periods of disenchantment with themselves, and everyone feels helpless the first time they try any new skill. These aren’t lies, they are all true. We all have moments of doubt. It’s normal, and you should sit with those feelings and respect them for what they are. But you need to breath past them, and keep trying.

My instructor made me feel a million gazillion times better after this lesson, telling me that I was doing maneuvers that usually are only taught much later after normal flight control is mastered completely. He told me a week later that he had his own struggles flying a new type of airplane, and could empathize with me and my frustration. He’s been flying since he was 15 years old, so I took his words to heart.

It’s important to have others believe in you, because they are the external forces that keep you up when all you want to do is lay down. But it’s more important to have one of those voices, the loudest voice, be you.

She may be little but she is fierce.

I wear a booster seat to sit in the plane, so that I can see over the nose. These are facts. I also occasionally sing to myself while in flight, squeal at random moments, and high five my instructor whenever I do something good. I need this positivity, this cheerleader mentality, because my spirit is a seven year old girl who loves the simple things in life. I want to fly because it’s fun, and because people don’t expect a girl like me to want to do this. I want to fly because I want to take my friends up in the air and fly up the coast of California. I want to take my niece up when she’s old enough and show her that anything is possible. I never believed that someone like me, spacey and spazzy and decidedly not holding an invitation to the boys club, would have what it takes to succeed. But I was very wrong!

Several lessons later, I am confidently able to say that I am almost ready for my solo flight. The mental wall is still slightly there, but I have been able to show myself more forgiveness for the hard stuff and allowed myself to celebrate the victories I have, like landing for the first time on my own, or doing a night flight across the Manhattan skyline.

You can do anything and stay who you are at the core. I never believed that until now!