They're All Trying to Kill Me!
(Or How I Manage to Survive as a Flight Instructor)
by
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It All Begins--
I must have been about ten or eleven years old when I first got the chance to go up in an aircraft. My youngest sister had been invited to go up with her best friend whose father, Ross, had a share in a small Piper. I looked so miserable that not inviting me would have been inhumane. Being born and growing up in Windsor, I was under the flight path of and only ten miles from Heathrow. Looking up at the sky whenever a plane went by was something that I just always did. If you asked me what I wanted to be when I was a kid, the answer was probably slightly unusual, either a computer programmer or a singer. It was the other kids that said fireman, astronaut or pilot. But, I believe that everybody has a secret wish to fly, a belief which has been strengthened by my instructing experiences. The first flight with Ross was relatively tame and over quickly as my sister wasn’t enjoying it. We landed, dropped off the girls, stopped for orange juice and biscuits and taxied back out – just Ross and me this time. Ross took us to a safe altitude and let me take the controls. I remember asking him to take the controls back saying that I didn’t like it and that it was too much power – easy to remember as that was the only time in my piloting career that I have said "too much power." Now there is a constant mantra of "got to get more power . . . " Soon after Ross took the controls again, I quite suddenly felt ill. Sickness was not something we had talked about before the flight so I did not know where to look for a sick-sack. Clamping my hand over my mouth was not the best solution to the problem. Have you ever pressed your thumb over the business end of a tap? It sprays everywhere, doesn’t it? The mixture of biscuits and orange juice is also not ideal if you are planning on taking kids aloft. On contact with a warm cockpit, it forms something akin to quick drying cement. I spoke to Ross a couple of years ago, some twenty years after the event. He and his fellow shareowners were still finding and chipping off orange concrete even then. An auspicious start to a wonderful career in aviation!
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About the Book
"They're all trying to kill me!" That is what the author told his boss after just one week as a flight instructor. Story after story supports the claim as the author tells of his brushes with death at the pointy end of the airplane and at the hands of his students. The book is light-hearted but manages to convey some of the perils that pilots and instructors face every day.
If a good pilot is defined as one with the same number of landings as takeoffs, then a good instructor would be defined as one who manages to live through teaching students enough to get their own pilot's certificates. Surviving more than a couple of students qualifies you as an old hand.
Ask climbers why they climb mountains and you will hear, "Because they are there." Ask the author why he flies and he will tell you, "Because the tops of the clouds make me cry." The author writes to offer a window into the world of aviation as he sees it. Of course, the window has a few dead bugs on it!
About the Author
Jeremy Vandersluis gave up a successful career in computing and finance with a salary well into six digits. When he learned to fly, he realized that nothing else could beat it. With no real intention of becoming an instructor, he passed the exams and found himself on the flight line with students of his own. He continues to survive repeated attempts on his life by those students.
Jeremy is an AOPA member and also belongs to the National Association of Flight Instructors. He is thirty-four-years-old and lives in Naples, Florida. He chose Naples because it is a great place to fly.