Why We Fly

By Rod Machado

Pop psychologist Leo Buscaglia once said, “When you learn something new, you become something new.” This is a vivid description of the benefits of learning to fly.

Students in the throes of flight training are constantly undergoing profound personal changes. They’re becoming something new with each flight because of the unique perspective aviation offers. If you’ve ever looked for a reason to fly, continue flying, or involve someone else in flying, you’ve found one—a good one, too. The opportunity for personal transformation is reason enough to invest in earning a pilot’s license. All the other great benefits are a bonus.

It’s indisputable that any intensive discipline involving both mind and body produces personal growth. Learning to fly does it bigger and better because it’s a pure performance environment. In the first Star Wars film, Luke says to Yoda that he will try to do better in harnessing the Force. “Try not. Do or do not. There is no try,” says the wise and wizened Yoda. And so it is in aviation. The cockpit is an educational crucible in which the irrelevancies of big talk and half-baked truths are boiled away, leaving a respect for ideas and techniques that work. Pilots, for instance, may brag about their landing prowess, but when they’re on final in a 20-knot wind, it’s what they know that counts. They either do, or do not.

Substance, not flash, is what aviation teaches. The direct application of knowledge and its immediate consequence help shape the way a pilot thinks. This is aviation’s unique perspective.

On the other hand, consider those honorable disciplines where no clear and immediate distinction exists between ideas and their consequences. Art is one that comes to mind. It seems to me that an artist can study for years and still be uncertain as to whether or not he’s producing quality work. This is especially true if he fancies Surrealism or Expressionism.

Unlike landing an airplane, there’s no immediate way to know how well you’re doing as a brush artist. An art expert or critic might be consulted to get an idea of a painting’s quality, and even then, you may not really know. Many renowned artists became so only in their later years or after their deaths. I can tell how good a landing is just by seeing whether the tires are still smoking, there’s a dent in the runway, or an ambulance has been called.