Hurry Up and Wait ......

The life of a flight instructor, or at least my life as a flight instructor. My goal in life is to always be ahead of schedule, or at least on time. Never late! That has been engrained in my head through the many years of athletics and from having a family member who says a certain time and then is constantly 15 - 20 minutes late.

To be on time for a 7:30 AM launch is a lot of work. We are allowed to get our airplane 30 minutes prior to launch, 7:00 AM, factor in 20 - 30 minutes for preflight planning and preflight brief with the student, and a 20 minute drive to the airport that has me dragging myself out of bed at 5:50 AM. With the usual snooze button routine I'm usually out of bed around 6am. Check the weather, looks alright, kind of marginal but should be good enough for a local closed traffic flight. Plus it will be a good experience for a student to see what MVFR is really like.

I get to the airport and start looking for my student at dispatch. Not there. Flight planning room? nope. Office? nope. Okay, time to sit down and wait for my student to show up. Finally the student shows up with only 10 minutes till we can get the plane. Alright, no big deal we do our planning and get out to the aircraft 20 minutes late, still no big deal. Preflight and get the airplane tugged out to the ramp and it is now almost 7:50 am. We are doing fine, still learning the checklists and flow patterns causes the engine start to take a little bit longer but it starts just fine and we throw on the radio master and pull up ATIS, "2 vis, 2,500 vis". Not good, the field just went IFR, time to work on our engine shutdown checklist.

Head back into dispatch and weather the flight, do a quick post-brief to talk about showing up with enough time to get a WX brief, weight and balance, takeoff and landing distance, and do a pre-flight brief. After a quick talk about our next scheduled flight the student takes off and I'm left here wondering what I'm going to do, my next flight is already being auto-weathered and I have nothing to do until 3 pm. Hurry up and wait....

Holy $**T Moment

Flying alone has never been a problem for me, in fact, it is my release, the reason I love flying. When things start to pile up on me and it seems like it's never going to end, the only therapy is to head to the airport and go up and circle the clouds, to look down on life. In the cockpit it is you and the airplane, looking down you realize how small things really are, how insignificant your current worry is.

I've flown with passengers since I've gotten my private, not many, but I've taken friends(and a girlfriend) up with me. I used to fly with my father at age 14 and I would be on the controls the whole time and never had one worry.

So while sitting at the end of the runway watching the first student I've ever flown with advance the throttle did I suddenly say "holy shit." Now, this 18 year old kid, and not that I'm much older, is looking to me to be a guiding force and have all the answers. I'm confident in my ability and my knowledge, I know I can land this plane in an emergency, I know I can handle an unusual attitude or abnormal situation. There is still however, that knowledge in the back of my mind, saying "this is it, your completely in control of your life and this kids life".

I believe you have to love that feeling, learn to embrace it. It's that feeling that will constantly make you strive to be a better pilot/instructor. It's that feeling that will drive me to not become complacent when I'm sitting in the right seat letting my student do steep turns while I stare out the window.

This is an old thought of mine and I felt it would be an appropriate starting point for this blog. I now have more hours instructing and still have/love that feeling. Each flight I learn something more about students, the airplane, instructing and myself.