Ted is one of those pilots with 15,000 plus hours that has flown most everything. First he started flying General Aviation light aircraft. Next: Hazardous military experience piloting Huey slicks and gunships over Vietnam. Then: Migrating to flying offshore oil rigs in Trinidad. Afterward he spent the majority of his career flying jets.
He’s even flown George and Barbara Bush.
I posed the question whether aviation was still “fun” once it became a routine. Below are some of his “reflections on flying” :
It was almost always fun.
I'll give you some quotes by T. West in an old Road & Track article about race driving that I carried with me throughout my career in the air:
- "---there is something thoroughly gorgeous about this manipulating of physics for precise, difficult ends."
- "The pleasure comes from knowing that, instant to instant, you alone are responsible for your decisions."
- "---bending a car or bike through a corner forcefully, accurately, in fully orchestrated control, is fundamentally a way of expressing beauty.....because to have done it very well is observably, palpably handsome."
- "But there is this other addiction, too, the addiction to doing hazardous things with orchestrated grace."
He was talking about racing, but I couldn't describe flying any better than that. It's what I believed when I flew and what I hoped to show those who came after me.
Hemingway called it "grace under pressure."
And when done right, it's a thing of beauty.
The "grace under pressure" he articulates confers great credit to Aviation. It’s what allowed a 737 crew to save 155 lives when faced with a crisis, landing in the Hudson. -or the fighter pilot who puts bombs precisely on target to save his brothers in arms. It’s a pursuit of excellence that urges the pilot to become better than he was yesterday. It’s a continuous improvement that gives General Aviation and its pilots a good name.
Ted got it right.
No comments:
Post a Comment