In Memoriam:
David Chapman, CFI
Bill Phippen, CFI

efore last year was half over, I'd been to two pilots' funerals. One was 36 years old, the other 42. Both their signatures are in my logbook; they were among the many men and women who have taught me to fly.

Both of them died in airplane crashes. Both accidents are still mysteries; in a few months, the National Transportation Safety Board will tell us what the experts think happened to the airplanes. But our friends' deaths, like all deaths, will remain deep mysteries.

Both funerals were well attended. The mourners (beyond the families) were predominately airport people: lots of guys in aviator shades and big wristwatches. Men outnumbered women, just as at the airport.

Both services were religious (one Mormon, one evangelical Christian), both featured insufferably smug preachers who took the opportunity to proselytize for their sects, and both promised us that we would all meet Up There, if only we would believe precisely what the preacher believed.

I dare say that the pilots among the mourners varied across the spectrum of belief from fervent assent through agnostic impatience to outright annoyance at the literally simple-minded theology (I may have tipped my own hand here). It doesn't matter. Neither service addressed the three themes that all the pilots among us must have meditated on. First, how could this happen? Second, could this happen to me? And finally, what do I think about the risk of flying?

Actually, the preachers asked the first of these questions and answered at it at tedious length, but they came at it from their own direction. They wanted to know (on our behalf) how a loving God could let this tragedy happen to us. Since every single person is absolutely certain to die, a sillier inquiry would be hard to imagine, but it seems to be the central question to these fellows. Their capacity for renewed surprise at death still surprises me.

No, we pilots phrased the question a good deal more technically. We wanted to know how the accidents happened, the grim mechanical details of wind and weather, engine behavior, control inputs, pilot decisions. We wanted to see the accident through each dead pilot's eyes, to roll the film back, to see if —just there—he might have saved the ship. Maybe the NTSB reports will tell a believable story.

We hope so, because it would help us give a comforting answer to the second question: could it happen to me? If only we can understand the accident, we think, we can learn from it and avoid that situation, that wrong choice, that error.

But the real answer to the second question is Yes, and we all know it. Yes, it could happen to us. Damn right it could. These were good pilots. They were instructors, we were their students; they were better than most of us, and it happened to them.

And that brings us to the hard question: Why do we do something that is so obviously, spectacularly, associated with risk?

This is the point where we usually trot out the accident figures, which really aren't very bad, and we will tell you that driving to the airport is the most dangerous part of flying, and that most flying accidents involve bad judgements of the kind we never, never make. And a properly trained pilot, with current weather information and a properly prepared airplane, is not some mad gambler with Fate. The risks are slight.

All of this is true enough, but we usually omit one little detail from the argument. Most of us don't have to fly. Our livelihoods don't depend on flying. So whatever the risk may be, it is gratuitous. We don't have to run this risk at all.

So why do we do it? And should we do it? Two pretty good questions. One at a time:

Why do we assume the unnecessary risk of flying? Some of us are adrenaline junkies. I don't think I am, but I may not be the most unbiased witness. I certainly love the exciting moments, the demanding tests that stretch my abilities—like flying steep, slow turns in a glider in a booming thermal. Some pilots fly at or near the limits of the art in aerobatic planes, and that's what turns their crank. We all explore our limits as we fly.

The psychobabblers call this a death wish. Pardon me, but in the technical terminology of my fellow pilots, I think they're full of shit. It's a life wish. People do these things because the actions are expressions of themselves at their best. People do them out of love of beauty. We fly because it's beautiful.

The risk is not the point. Beauty is the point. It just so happens that beauty is dangerous.

Yes, to pursue beauty passionately involves love, and we all know that love is dangerous. To love is to place yourself at risk, spiritually, psychically, and often physically too. Yet we do it, and we do it joyfully.

Who pursues beauty so passionately? Artists, of course. They do so in spite of the very real spiritual risks involved in sending your soul into your creation. Everything creative is dangerous, because creativity involves doing something for the first time, without the benefit of someone else's experience. (Those who will not take this risk paint doggies and duckies. Sentimentality is the meager consolation of those who are afraid of passion.)

Who else? Athletes, too. They pour their best selves into their race, their dive, their leap. (Those who will not take the risk join health clubs and settle for looking good. Narcissism is the consolation of those who merely wish to look the part.)

And pilots? We contrive to make the invisible air support us, we relinquish the security of feet on the ground because flying is demanding, delightful, beautiful: because we love it. Very few of us are actually crazy, and nearly all of us manage the risks as well as we can, but we all willingly trade some of our security for the immeasurable beauty of the sky.

I am certain that there is a biological need, a drive, hard- wired into us by evolution, to take risks, to extend our scope, to explore, to change what we are given.

I am absolutely sure that beauty is a good and sufficient reason for taking risks. I am convinced beyond doubt that we starve without beauty, and that many people do in fact starve themselves and others of beauty out of fear.

So that's why we accept the risks. Now for the other question: should we?

Fear of death is the silliest and most futile waste of energy imaginable. You are an adult at twenty, let us say, and you determine to live to be ninety. Therefore you decide to live prudently, to minimize your exposure to risk. You establish sensible routines. You eliminate surprises. And maybe you live to be ninety.

What is the point of living seventy more years, if all you do is live the same year seventy times?

Did anyone, on his deathbed after a lifetime of taking no chances, congratulate himself on his prudence?

No. Embrace life passionately. Take your life seriously, but live it joyfully. Those of us pilots who sat through those two funerals will continue to fly.

Of course, we may just take a little more time with our preflight checks from now on....

© Paul J. Sampson