Page 31 - Volume 20 Number 8

GA, the Air Force and at the airlines. A couple were engine failures in twins, one was at Oshkosh, a few of them were military fighter accidents: midairs and CFIT, one pilot ripped the wings off a C-150 that I had recently delivered to a flight school and an airline pilot tore the tail off an airliner. Still another Part 121 crew flew into a mountain and then, of course, there was 9-11. A couple of the events I witnessed as they happened, a few because I was nearby and the rest were through families or the grapevine. None of the pilots left the airport knowing it was their last flight and none of them were stupid, well, except maybe the C-150 pilot. When she was asked how you get your picture on her wall of fame at the Happy Bottom Riding Club (The Right Stuff ), Poncho Barnes said: “You gotta die, honey.” Those test pilots on her wall weren’t stupid either. Dead Poets is about writers and poets that passed away peacefully;sugar plums dancing in their grey- haired heads. Dead Pilots generates a different and visceral image. It causes us to search for a difference between them and us, in hope of protecting ourselves from a similartragedy. We subconsciously hope they did something stupid that we certainly would never do ourselves. The scary part is, quite often, there is very little difference between them and us. In our desire to follow the road less traveled, vigilance over romance must be the motif of our pilot’s society.Not In Kansas AnymoreDead Poets’ Professor Keating wants to claim to have taken the exceptional road, if not the spiritual high road; but he knows, on some level, that it’s a hollow boast. Another classic boast comes from a man demanding the seemingly impossible from a sweet Kansas girl: a broom. There is a sign quoting The Wizard of Oz above the office in my hangar: “No one gets in to see the Wizard. Not no one – not no how.” Those unfamiliar with the character of the wizard may think the line an admonishment. A warning to not encroach on the all- knowing, fighter-pilot-airline-pilot- writer behind the curtain, insideAUGUST 2016 TWIN & TURBINE • 29