Indeed, I have started to take flying lessons. An old young boys dream, and I am certainly not the only one to have it. Only, I thought it was time to do something about it. I know it is polluting, does not contribute to a sustainable development of our planet, but I hope earlier or later to be able to contribute with this skills to the development of regions and populations for which a plane is sometime the only salvation. And while taking those lessons I have learned a lot about management.
The success of a flight is a good preparation, both the navigation and the technical check up before the flight. It is good to know where you would like to go, in order to be able to take some immediate decisions. That does not mean that you also arrive where you would like to go. But it is all about the travel, and not about arriving.
The most critical phase is take off. Whatever goes wrong during take off and initial ascend has immediate and often serious consequences. However, it is not always under your control what happens. Once you have reached your intended flying level, you can take some time to look around, to enjoy the flying and the environment. Then comes landing. That is just a masterpiece of coordination and control. But that is the most difficult. Just as passing on a successful company in the hands of somebody else (the more so if it is one's own company). A perfect landing is and remains a great sensation.
Piloting is being at ease, it is making little corrections to a plane that has a remarkable tendency for stability.
And don't forget, you are in command, and you have full and ultimate responsibility for your passengers. They trust you but they have no other choice than to follow you. Respect that choice and respect your passengers.
Have a very good holiday.
A few months before you started flying lessons (and made this old young man's dream of yours come true), I experienced (and am still experiencing) pregnancy and maternity, and I feel there are some connections in the relationships between my young one (1 year old now) and me, and the way you feel on board about your passengers. I still do not know whether I am still in the take off phase or have already reached the more peaceful phase of flying (I feel more in the second phase though), and I still wonder what the landing phase will look like (hopefully not everything can be compared to the flying experience in the education of a young one!), but I definitely feel like I have full and ultimate responsibility, though he sometimes knows so much better than me. For plenty of decisions, he has no other choice than to follow me, but I am trying my best to repect his being in command sometimes though his way of expressing it is clear only to me. Hopefully he will repect me for this when he is a grown-up, and will forget or forgive my mistakes.
Posted by: Emmanuelle M. | August 29, 2007 at 09:38 AM