Remove Before Flight

Remove Before Flight

“The elevator’s trim, rudder’s trim, mixture’s rich, flaps are at ten degrees…”

Pete, the PAHT-nah (partner), is talking through a pre-flight checklist as we wait to taxi from the Tauranga airport. In the nearly 12 months we’ve known each other, Pete’s talked about taking me flying. Now, with my departure from New Zealand less than ten days away, the weather, schedules, and aircraft maintenance have obliged so Pete can fulfill his promise. The sky is overcast, but the cloud ceiling will allow us to fly at 2,500 feet; it’s the weekend, so we’re not competing with flight school students for air time; and there’s a new-ish plane (called FCO, or Foxtrot Charlie Oscar) Pete has enough confidence in to haul what he calls “precious cargo,” which is me.

Pete checks the Cessna 152 single-engine propeller aircraft as I watch. He walks the plane’s perimeter, inspecting flaps, wheels, the rudder… He gives me a couple wooden door-stopper-looking blocks (called chocks). “Remove before flight,” is written on the attached red fabric streamer. Chocks keep the plane’s wheels from moving while the aircraft is parked. 

Not to get too it’s-a-blog-so-let’s-be-introspective about it, but clearing the blocks makes sense. We all have obstacles to remove before getting airborne, to pursue our passions – flying, running, writing, healing, building houses or making a home, cooking, sewing,  painting, steering a company or captaining a ship. If we’re lucky, we even get paid to do the work we’re driven to do – the stuff we can’t NOT do. But we can’t take off until we clear the blocks – fear, lack of training, dearth of experience, paucity of confidence. Unless you’re a kid, or really cocky, you start with blocks under your feet or on your brain. Then, education, repetition, a mentor and several successful trials provide tools you need to remove the blocks. You start to fly. You start to believe you’re good when others repeatedly tell you so.

Pete continues the pre-flight check: “Hatches and harnesses are secure; throttle friction is up, firm not tight; controls are full and free and moving in the correct sense.”

After Pete completes the list stored inside his head, he radios air traffic control:  “Foxtrot Charlie Oscar request taxi for Papamoa, POB [persons on board] two, in receipt of echo 10-16.”

Tower: “Clear to taxi to holding point, report to holding zero-seven.”

I’m enjoying the patter, enjoying watching the PAHT-nah doing what he’s been training ten years to do – become a commercial pilot. Pete gave up a successful sales career to become a student – trading relative financial security for six-figure debt. Start all over. Start all over. My God, why would you? Unless you can’t NOT do it. Unless not following your dream would haunt you forever.

Pete repeats what air traffic control just said: “Clear to taxi to holding point, report holding zero-seven.”

Pete the Pilot

My stomach, already fluttery pre-flight, jumps from beneath my snug lap belt. I look over at Pete, handsome even under his two or three-day stubbly beard growth. He wears a headset to talk to the tower and me. I must trust him – heaps – because I don’t like small planes, and this is the tiniest aircraft in which I’ve ever sardined my caboose. It’s barely a two-seater, with just enough space to shoehorn a duffle bag in back. My knees are rising towards my chin, and I’m not that tall.

            “This must be terribly uncomfortable for big people,” I tell Pete.

            “Yeah,” he says. And we do get some large guys in here – one of them looked like he was pregnant with triplets.”

I suck in my gut and angle my knees so as not to impede Pete’s use of the thingymagigs and whatdyacalits – controls I’m sure are important.

Pete taxis on the grassy part of the airstrip and we’re going faster, faster, faster. The tower speeds past. Are we gonna get airborne in this tiny tin can? The most dangerous parts of flight are take-off and landing, right? I pray we don’t hit any seagulls on the way up.

No gulls, just lift as the Cessna’s nose angles into the mid-day sky. Take-off is smooth as a palm frond – no bumps at all. We’re flying over Tauranga, over blue water, white buildings, then looking down on Papamoa’s green pastures and hills. The villa we’re about to vacate is a speck beneath us - somewhere. So’s Amy’s old house. 

Pete asks,

            “Where do you wanna go?”

            “Along the coast,” I respond.

Maketu Peninsula, Bay of Plenty

Pete points out the Maketu peninsula to our South as he turns the plane 180 degrees. Then, he says,

            “You want to fly it?”

Uh, no. I’m comfortable with you behind the controls, Handsome Pilot. I visualize pushing the steering column in or pulling out the wrong way and next thing – bam! I’ve crashed the nose into a paddock next to a herd of alarmed Kiwi cows. I’ll pass.

I didn’t say that. Instead, I reply,

            “Sure. What do I do?”

Pete, ever the instructor, explains how pulling the yoke (or control column) angles the plane up, and pushing it in brings it down. Got it.

            “You need to gently keep your hands on the steering column,” says Pete. “Don’t grip it tightly.”

Nervous flyer

Right. Not like I’m doing. I’m squeezing what looks like the remnants of a car’s steering wheel like I’m juicing an orange. Quit juicing.

I turn the plane right, towards the ocean and up slightly. I’m steering an aircraft! Crikey. I can understand how this might be fun – if I weren’t so damned nervous. I really, really want Pete to resume flying. I barely qualify to be an airline passenger, let alone a pilot.

Just then, the Tower radios, saying,

            “Foxtrot Charlie Oscar - Cessna 172 making a Papamoa approach.” Pete says, “Copy traffic.”

There’s another plane up here! Of course other planes are up here. I ask Pete how the other pilot knows not to hit us.

            “He’s much lower,” says Pete, “by at least 500 feet.”

Mt. Maunganui peninsula and the Mount

Pete’s steering the plane again. I relax and resume snapping pictures as we fly towards the Mount. The 761-foot extinct volcanic dome is the region’s defining landmark. I ran to the top the day before. I’d been around the Mount in a boat, but had never seen it from the sky. The familiar cone looks different from above – flatter and shorter, but still beautiful with its two-toned rings of green: lighter-colored and grassy on the bottom and darker pine on top.

We fly over Matakana Island, largely uninhabited and tree-covered. Pete says he often sees sharks off the island’s coast. By now, I’ve relaxed enough to enjoy the ride – I’m already thinking about our next flight. Pete tells me we’re traveling about 200 kilometers an hour.

Pete radios the tower, requesting clearance for landing. Once he’s got the okay, he maneuvers the plane from one-thousand feet over Tauranga’s harbor to just above a grassy strip at the airport. 

Coming in for a landing

Gradually, and smoothly, he inches the Cessna down.

I can’t stop smiling.

Back on the ground

It was fun to ride along with Pete for 45 minutes, to see familiar territory from a new angle.

My pilot notes the time and distance flown in the log, closes the aircraft and replaces the wooden blocks that’ll hold the plane in place. Another fear – of flying in a small plane – surmounted. 

Anxiety: Remove before flight