It was April 18th, 2010. There was a heavy crosswind. It was heavier than I would have attempted all on my own, but my friend and flight instructor was with me. He and I flew a lot together even after I got my license, because we both needed the hours, and we always had a lot of fun flying together. We were taking turns shooting touch-and-goes. It was my turn to land. I had my power at full take-off as I came in on the landing, because my vertical climb indicator said I was sinking 1000 feet per minute. I remember muttering to him, "That can't be right," and tapping on the gauge to try to get the needle to move. The engine didn't sound right. We checked to make sure the fuller tank was set. We double-checked the carburetor heat to make sure it wasn't carb-ice. He told me to give it more power. I told him there was no more power to give. He asked if I needed him to take the controls and I said I had it, but be ready. He always was. And our usual cockpit banter went cold and silent. Tense.
I remember the way it smelled in the plane that day. I will always remember. It's a smell of 1970s electronics and vinyl and a faint hint of engine oil, which in that setting smells a lot like when you're heating vegetable oil up in a pan to flash-fry something. Ever since I started flying, that smell has both thrilled and nauseated me.
The orange runway-end-indicator-lights were coming up fast and close. I remember looking at those REILs and wondering which one was going to catch the landing gear and send us ass over elbows on the threshold. I wondered if there was going to be a fire. I regretted not having time to radio in to Wellsville CTAF and tell them my dog was home alone and to ask someone to call my husband and tell him I loved him and I tried. I wondered if dying was going to hurt much, and which one of Wellsville's fire departments would be the one that came and cleaned us up off the tarmac with shovels and hoses. I saw my whole life in front of my eyes like a movie, all the happy times, and all the times I was a major asshole. All of it in a single flash.
And then the next thing I heard was my friend's laugh break through my headset. We were on the ground. Our wheels were on the runway, and the big white runway numbers were flat and big in the windscreen, up ahead for Runway 2-8. We were elbows over ass, the way it should be.
He looked just as shocked as I felt.
"You did it!" he said, laughing. "I never doubted you."
"Like hell," I said. And he laughed, and I knew he'd been clenching every muscle just like I'd been, but he let me take the landing, which we both knew had no possibility of an abort and go-around.
"That's the first time I've ever seen you land and not take up the whole runway!" he teased. His sense of humor always recovered a lot quicker than mine. But I laughed just the same, because he was right, and I was just so damn happy to be upright on the runway and not dead and waiting for firemen to scrape me off the pavement.
I cannot stress enough how exhilarating that feeling is.
He taxied us onto the apron, because at that point, I was shaking, insisting I was all right. Just shook-up. He humored me. The linesboy and a mechanic towed us into the Big Hangar, where schtuff really goes down, with the promise that they'd see what happened, get it fixed, and get me back flying before I got too snake-bit.
Ha.
I flew with the chief instructor in the airport's Tomahawk, which was always my favorite little plane to fly- he made me fly a few days after the Incident, so I wouldn't get scared. And then I had my Biannual Flight Review in the heat of July in that beloved little flying plexiglass solar cooker.
In the meantime, the mechanics were figuring out that Something Wasn't Right in the engine. A cylinder (#3) had begun to separate. The fresh overhaul that was a big selling point when I bought the bird turned out to be a slather-assy "field overhaul" done by a previous owner, and it amounts to taking apart the engine casing, slapping a little paint on things, maybe installing a new head gasket, and writing a "mission accomplished" in the logbook. An airplane from a neighboring airport that summer had been contracted by the FDA to fly around central PA to survey tent-worm damage, and that airplane had engine trouble a mile from the Lock Haven airport, went down in a residential neighborhood, caught the power lines, caught fire, and killed everybody on board. It left a mark at our airfield, because aviation tends to be a pretty small community. That plane was a 1972 Cessna. Mine's a 1972 Piper. They both had the same engine. It was their #3 cylinder that separated and did them in. And I have dwelt on that awful coincidence since the day I was called and told about the accident. It had us all spooked.
I had my daughter in 2011. Life took over. I got snake-bit by a basilisk. The plane sat idle at the Wellsville Airport from 2010 until 2018, and the first time I went up in it with the mechanic who overhauled it, who is also a flight instructor, I had a full-on panic attack as we were landing.
Because that was the same view I saw in April 2010 that day. It was October, but a similar kind of windy day. I'd been all talked up into trying to land. I agreed, but reluctantly. There was Runway 2-8. There were those REILs- they look like orange T-shaped utility poles. There were the precision landing stripes, those big white runway numbers. That smell- old electronics and vinyl and oil getting ready to fry. And my mouth got dry, my throat closed up, my chest tightened, my fingers started tingling, and I could not hear the throaty drone of the engine through my headset, for the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears.
"Your controls!" I said to the instructor, taking my feet off the rudders and my hands off the yoke, like a Vegas card dealer.
"My controls," he said calmly. "You okay?"
"Just not ready for this!" I said, folding myself up like a dying butterfly, closing my eyes behind my dark glasses- always dark, dark glasses.
We landed without incident and I thanked him for the flight, for landing for me. He said he'd be happy to work with me to get me back in the sky. I asked him to help me sell the plane. He said he would, and he tried. We tried. There were no serious bites on that line. So my husband decided to finish up his certificate. I got jealous, because that was MY thing. I was the pilot. So when it needed work, and then when the work was done and it was time to bring it home, I campaigned hard to get to be the one to fly it home. We arranged for the former chief instructor at Wellsville, a friend and fellow who has over thirty-thousand hours in the sky, who has seen it all, and who knows how to manage a panicking rusty pilot like a champ, to ride to Williamsport and fly home with me, since I'm so rusty I have lots of work to do to get current with my license.
And I did it. I was terrified. My emergency location transmitter was going nuts, which provoked ATC in two locations, I was freaking out, begging the instructor to just fly me home and I'd try again another day, and he folded his arms over his chest the way flight instructors do and said if it got really tough, he would, but he thought I needed to do this myself. And I did. And it was terrifying and rad, and I'm still processing it all. I had every intention to get right back in the sky that week after the plane got home. And then everything went on lockdown, and it's hard to social distance in a plane where you sit literally shoulder-to-shoulder. So that's going to have to wait.
But there's more to this story. Of course. I've been sitting for weeks, and we're in this weird time and I have Thoughts. But I've kept you too long already. You'll just have to come back for the second part of this Free Bird story, if you want.
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