Scared of Flying?

[ShyTorque]

A few thoughts after almost forty years of flying for a living...

I was once, in my youth, told by an AEF pilot I was a natural pilot. I flew an RAF flying scholarship at the age of 17 and found it easy. I desperately wanted to fly fast jets but to my surprise I hated RAF flying training on the JP. In fact I hated the whole BFTS jet training environment. Having worked as a builder's labourer for a couple of years before joining up and having very much learned to stand up for myself whilst doing so, I resented the bullying way it was carried out. I found myself becoming very stressed at times before flying and desperately wanted to punch the lights out of one particular QFI, who looking back, very much deserved it and probably shouldn't have been instructing. The system back then didn't really accept character clashes so I had to put up with the idiot for some time. I know Beagle found similar issues during his training, it wasn't just me. Faulty sinuses eventually resulted in me losing my medical. More stress, until I eventually found myself on RW, where the training system was run in a more adult fashion and I regained my enthusiasm for flying.

I've never been scared of flying, but I have been worried about launching at times. I've never been scared of heights either in or out of the cockpit, but I did feel a bit strange on a couple of occasions, once when orbiting power station cooling towers and looking down into the black hole of one and another time on task orbiting a very deep sinkhole where an old lead mine had just collapsed and the aircraft's night sun beam didn't seem to reach the bottom!

I too have suffered the recurring dream where I was flying down a long city street, below the rooftops and on trying to climb to safe altitude, being trapped by multiple power cables stretched above. That occurred often after an IMC event where I was flown over water avoiding one set of power lines below and suddenly realised we were under another higher set at the same time....

I also went through a period of operational flying in NI where I knew every flight might be the last. This thought occurred every wet, gloomy day at the armoury while loading the magazines of my Browning 9mm and my SA-80. We were suffering a period of very poor weather and because of it we had to fly all day in the high "PK" (probability of kill) zone for small arms fire at a time of high IRA activity. The worry of being shot down was ever present, the thought of being used as a political pawn after possible capture by the IRA was, too. The politics of the time played down the threat, we knew it was very real, aircraft were being brought down and the IRA hated helicopter crews with a vengeance. Soldiers were being murdered...in the UK. The rules of engagement were difficult, the thought of being prosecuted for firing back was also of some great concern, especially as precedents had been set.

Two of my RAF instructional tours involved teaching major emergencies on a full motion simulator. One day it suddenly occurred to me that I had become totally de-sensitised to crashing. After all, we always survived them and after resetting the sim, just carried on and had another go. I had to give myself a severe talking to about that! Possibly a unique scenario.

These days, in civvie street, the job is often demanding, especially in the winter bad weather, but the main concerns are not getting the job done, or rather, telling the aircraft owner we're not able to launch. Also not busting the ever increasing rules brought in by EASA whilst doing so....