Big World, Small World

Back in the “old days,” back when transitioning from domestic to international flying usually meant also transitioning from two and three engine narrow body aircraft like the DC-9 and the 727 to three and four engine wide body aircraft like the L-1011 and the 747, one of the first things you noticed was that “the world gets bigger and the runways get shorter.” That’s how a senior captain once described the experience to his very inexperienced 1011 First Officer, me. What he meant was, you start to cover very large distances when you can fly at Mach .85 for nine hours, and you realize what a big place the world is. You also discover that to do that—to carry that much weight in terms of fuel to go that far with a big airplane full of people and bags—that you also need a lot more runway both to takeoff and land. Where you might have been pretty comfortable with a 7000 or 8000 foot runway before, 7000 feet was now a short runway.

But the more you fly and the more people you fly with, the smaller the world gets as well. (But it doesn’t make the runways any longer.) You meet so many people in aviation, and often spend quite a bit of time with them, get to know them well, and then things change—you change aircraft, or bases, or companies, and you never or seldom see them again. But you do meet and see other people who often knew the same people you did. In aviation, it is both a big world and a small world.

I remember, for instance, back in 2004 or 2005, doing a Honolulu turn out of San Francisco on the 757 for ATA, talking to my copilot who, it turned out, grew up in New London, New Hampshire. I told him that I knew New London very well, having lived just a few miles away in Hanover, New Hampshire for four years when I flew corporate jets for AMCA International out of Lebanon, New Hampshire. It turned out that he knew several of the other AMCA pilots as well, no surprise there, but what was a real surprise was that he also knew one of the captains I had flown with at a previous job, Cub Snively, because Cub was also from New London and one of his sons was my copilot’s best friend from childhood. He also told me that, sadly, Cub had died a few years earlier. (Pilots often seem to die young—I joke that it’s the coffee—but more likely it’s the strain we put on our bodies being awake at all sorts of odd hours combined with years of extra radiation bombardment. Or maybe it’s nothing, maybe we just remember the ones who die young.)

I’m thinking about all this right now because I got an email the other day from another former AMCA pilot, Keith Hasperg, who found me because he had stumbled across my blog. I hadn’t talked to Keith in many, many years, going back before ATA, but often thought about him, for two reasons: One, he was one of the funniest and smartest people I had ever known, and two, he was one of the best pilots I had every flown with, a very skilled pilot, but, unlike most “naturals,” very careful and conservative as well. So it was great to hear from him again. But he also had bad news—another of the AMCA pilots, Nate Lake, had died in July of 2007, and I had fallen so out of touch with Nate that I didn’t even know he had died—I just assumed I could call him any time I wanted or go up to New Hampshire and that he would be there. It struck particularly hard because Nate really was one of the best pilots I had ever known, and taught me an awful lot about how to fly airplanes well, simply by his example and his tactful, always diplomatic “suggestions” for better ways of doing things. He was also a great friend, and that doesn’t always happen.

I remember asking Nate once how it was he was able to hand fly the aircraft so well, exactly on altitude and airspeed—you almost couldn’t tell if the autopilot was on or not when Nate flew, except his hand flying was, if anything, smoother than the autopilot. He said that when he was in Navy primary flight training that they trained in tandem seat aircraft, and that his primary instructor carried a small stick with him. Communication was difficult from front to back, so this guy would just tap him on the helmet whenever he saw anything he didn’t like, like the altitude being off by 20 feet. Nate said it just got easier to never let anything deviate than to put up with that d… stick. What it really was was Nate’s careful way of telling me that anyone can do it, you just have to try.

After I left AMCA, I got into aviation writing and eventually got a contract to do what would turn out to be the first edition of my navigation book, The Aviator’s Guide to Modern Navigation. The first person I consulted before starting was Nate Lake because he was also a trained Navy navigator. He read all of my chapters in draft form and caught many mistakes and made many helpful suggestions. I owe him a lot. If it hadn’t been for aviation being such a small world, I never would have found out what a big world it is. If I have any excuse for not having gotten in touch with him later, it was that I thought he would live forever.