I spent a long weekend making two trips in the Cirrus SR20. The flights included an instrument approach down to 500′ overcast at the untowered airport in Bar Harbor, Maine, operations at a busy towered airport (Hanscom), and short-field operations on the 2500′ runway at Block Island, Rhode Island. It included running into someone we knew at an airport (California instructor Jeff Moss training a new jet owner from Texas).
My host in Maine is an accomplished pilot who owns and operates a single-engine turboprop. He has a college-age daughter who would be any parent’s treasure. Despite the fact that my friend has ample funds with which to have purchased this child an airline ticket or even a jet charter, he sent her back to Hanscom Field with me in the Cirrus. How often does one have an opportunity to find out how one’s friends truly evaluate one’s level of skill and responsibility? It reminded me of being a 200-hour pilot working on my instrument rating in Alaska. My instructor had more than 5000 hours of flying time… on skis. In addition he had been an FAA employee for decades, supervising air taxi operations. When he asked me to give his wife a ride to a nearby airport I felt much more proud than when I had passed my Private checkride.
It is definitely simpler to stay home and/or drive a Honda Accord everywhere that one needs to go. But I’m happy that I have challenged myself and invested enough time with flight training that friends will trust me with their children.
Indeed, it’s a great feeling to be trusted as a pilot. I am a helicopter private pilot with just about 70 hours and looking forward to enhance my skills.
Good luck with your flying.
Phil, I would trust you with my daughter. I have no idea how well fly. But you’ve demonstrated that you know how to think. While I’m not a pilot, my guess is that the ability to “think rationally” in real time, understand the physics of fluid dynamics, and don’t let ego get ahead of your skill level (judgement) are all a big part of good piloting.
In a previous life I was licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate commercial nuclear power plants and train reactor operators at the senior level. The skills required are not much different from flying. Biggest difference (in general) is that reactor events unfold more slowly. And therefore, longer time to react (read: think).