Transportation: What to Do When the Pilot Dies

There are now no fewer than 149,755 private pilots in the U.S., and the day has gone when the only pilots soloing were barnstorming stuntmen or crop dusters. Today’s passengers may be wives, sweethearts, best pals or business clients. Inevitably, the chilling question has occurred to them: “What would I do if he blacked out now?”

Not that either heart attacks or other seizures are more common among the new flying fraternity than more earth-bound men. But they are more disastrous, and the time may come when elementary piloting is taught in every U.S. high school (as car driving is in many states). In the meantime, such training is already under way for members of a group that feels the need for it: private-flyers’ wives.

In Palm Springs, Calif., at the convention of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, 150 wives were taking a seven-day course in handling and landing a light plane. Some, such as Judy Parker, even brought their children—present and future. Nobody mentioned the medical contingencies that lay behind the course, but it was obvious: the women flew from the copilot’s seat, rather than the pilot’s seat on the left, where regular students are taught. But the instruction, designed to undercut feminine fears and build confidence that they could handle a plane, was simple and optimistic enough to make an oldtime pilot blush.

“In an automobile accident—bing, now you’re driving, now you’re not,” said Ground School Instructor Donald Sundin. “But take a plane now, and you’ve got time to do things. Say you lose an engine at 5,000 feet. Well, you lose maybe 500 or 600 feet a minute, and you glide 1½ miles a minute. That gives you about ten minutes during which you can find a spot to land within a 900-square-mile area.” Sundin burned into the students’ brains the radio frequency of 121.5 megacycles, the universal “Mayday” channel. “Now,” he pointed out, “if something goes wrong, you just turn to that frequency and say ‘It’s Mabel—Help!’ and they’ll help. Why, they’ll clean every other airplane out of the area for you, Mabel, and they’ll talk you right into a nice, greasy landing.” Mabel grasped the co-pilot steering wheel—which in today’s planes reassuringly looks and operates much like a car’s—and began to feel that flying wasn’t all that complicated.

As the “Pinch-Hitter Program” progressed, many a woman became almost enthusiastic. Some of the men, in fact, were less confident than their wives; Joe Van Coelen of Belmont, Calif., even refused to let his wife use his plane to learn in, but rented one for her instead. She—close to 70—was able to land within the second hour of her training.

Another fledgling, after being complimented by her instructor on her skill, asked him not to tell her husband. “If he hears about it,” she explained, “the old goat will always be wanting to go to sleep and make me fly.”