Editor's Note
Romancing the Sky
In 1958, my father fired the commercial airlines. Having been caught in a traffic jam en route to Chicago’s Midway Airport for a business trip, he stood helpless at the gate watching his flight take off. Vowing never again to be dependent on United Airlines’ schedule, he went directly from Midway to enroll in private pilot lessons. Thus began my father’s 40-year romance with flying.
My dad pursued flying with the same intensity he approached everything in his life. After getting his private pilot’s license, he obtained a commercial and instrument certificate. After renting single-engine Cessna 172s for years, he purchased a single-engine Cessna 210, which was soon replaced by a twin-engine Cessna 310 with the name 310DM (“Delta Mike”). He fastidiously maintained his airplanes and his pilot skills. Discovering that he could get a hot air balloon certification by just having a private pilot’s license, he obtained one and would whimsically brag about it to anyone who would listen, although he went up in a hot air balloon only once and as a passenger.
Thumbing his nose at United Airlines’ regimented schedules, he flew his plane for business wherever and whenever he could. Flying was also the mandatory means of transport for our family trips. I remember two-day excursions from Chicago to California to visit my sister at college, during which we stopped at such picturesque spots as Amarillo and El Paso. The monotony of droning engines and endless southwestern desert that was so painful for me seemed lost on my dad as he plotted vectors and talked to air traffic controllers. He was definitely closer to heaven at 8,000 feet.
This idyllic marriage of man and plane was interrupted when my dad had an episode of coronary insufficiency at the age of 57 and his medical certification was pulled until he could prove his safety as a pilot. Suddenly, the previously routine flight physicals with his friend Dr. Brown turned into a battle Galactica with the FAA. Initially denied recertification, my dad challenged the FAA ruling for years, all the while continuing to fly with a licensed, hired pilot in the seat next to him so he could maintain his skills. When he finally emerged victorious and was once again airborne, he had navigated most of the shoals of aviation medicine covered in this month’s issue. He went through two more battles for his medical certification, one after a coronary bypass at age 75 and another when he went into permanent atrial fibrillation; thereafter, he subjected himself to exhaustive, emotionally tense cardiac evaluations twice a year so that he could keep flying. When he went down with Cessna 310DM at the age of 84, he had just passed his flight physical.
My mother and father had been married for 62 years when they died on that flight. It was a storybook marriage sealed by love and respect. My mother was clearly my dad’s first love, but flying was a close second.
For those who catch the bug, flying is magical—a rapturous mixture of spectacular vistas, mechanical mastery, and perceived freedom. Beginning commercial pilots work for minimal wages to do it. Aviation docs weather paperwork and the routine of aviation physicals to support it. And pilots like my dad spend time, money, and emotion to hear “Cessna 310 Delta Mike cleared for take-off.”
Charles R. Meyer, M.D., editor in chief, can be reached at cmeyer1@fairview.org