IFLY

As a flight instructor, I quickly discovered that each and every student learns differently. Flight instructors must develop various teaching methods because no two students are identical.

In the airplane, a student faces a multitude of emotions from excitement to nervousness to fear to frustration to elation. Due to the nature of the environment, I am blessed with the opportunity to learn a great deal about each student and how they will react in different situations and how they will cope with the demands placed upon them in flight.

Something that is of great importance with older students is that flying must be fun. Most students over 60 embark on flight training for pleasure and the sheer joy of flying. They are not looking for a career in aviation, but are expanding their horizons and accomplishing a lifelong goal. This is the case of Dick Cutler, who worked diligently this year to accomplish his dream of learning to fly at the age of 70.

As he learned to fly, Dick wrote down many of his experiences and feelings, which he later let me read. I’ll quote some of his remarks. “My interest in aviation first began as a young boy during WW2 when I started building the flying and scale model kits that were available at that time. My friends and I were enthusiastic in learning about every type of aircraft flown by allied and enemy air forces . . . I knew that someday I too would fly and could experience these effects (of flight) first hand.”

Dick enrolled in the fall 2002 ground school course and began flying a few months into the ground school. Describing his flight training Dick wrote, “As we age, most of us develop our own pretty good error correction feedback system. Once we’ve finally focused on an error and have made a correction a number of times, the event becomes imprinted in our memory and those mistakes aren’t made often again. If just takes extra time – especially when controlling over a ton of complicated machinery and sophisticated electronics within an alien, invisible medium (and in a constantly varying three-dimensional environment) while attempting to come to grips with the unfamiliar science of flight.”

Dick’s hard work and determination paid off in late June when he went on his first solo flight. He wrote, “I now knew with conviction that the months, hard work, and expense of ground schooling and flight training had been well worth the effort for just those few wonderful and stimulating minutes of solo flight and for marking another major milestone in my life. Most importantly, I now knew with certainty how wonderful it was to later hear a seasoned pilot remark: ‘Congratulations – you’re now a pilot!’”

Dick insisted I include one other quotation from his writings. “Tammy Blanford, our young ground school instructor and CFI (Certified Flight Instructor), was highly professional in every phase of training and really knew the material. She conducted ground school with consummate skill and was always well prepared. During the hours I spent flying with her before soloing, she never appeared to lose patience and never preached, reprimanded, or tried to prove that her own flight skills and knowledge were superior…a person of advanced age, if given a choice, might naturally gravitate toward choosing an older instructor. Based on my own experience, this may not always be the wisest thing to do.”