The Would-Be Pilot

He sits in the left seat, looking over his right shoulder toward the camera. In front of him are seemingly endless banks of dials and gauges. The whole scene is lit by glaring sunlight, reflected in through the narrow windows of the cockpit off of the concrete tarmac. Through the glare of the midday sun, there are barely visible outlines of people on the tarmac dressed in casual summer wear. Dressed in a bush hat, t-shirt and shorts, he doesn't have the proper attire for a pilot but his look is of one who knows where he is and what he is doing. His eyes are serious, as if to say, I could fly this thing if they'd let me, and even the reflection from the oval, narrow-rimmed glasses seems to add to the sense that he belongs in that seat, his seat.

There is the barest outline of someone in the right seat, but like the world outside, this someone can't be made out very well. It's not about them anyway; it's about him and "his" airplane. Still, the gauges read zero; nothing is actually on. There are no brightly lit screens or flashing indicator lights. It's painfully obvious that this plane isn't moving, and the feeling is plain as well that it won't move any time soon, at least not while he's in the seat. He'll never get the chance to push the four throttles forward, no matter how hard he might wish for it. He'll never hear the howl of the engines or feel himself pushed back as he guides the great bird into the air. Maybe that's why there is wistfulness in those eyes, too.

The reality is that this is an air show, the aircraft parked, chocked, deactivated and guarded. It is the one-hundredth anniversary of the Wright brothers' famous first flight, and it is a fitting setting for the man in the seat. Nearly thirty years before, his father had taken him to a similar air show and he had sat in an identical seat in an identical aircraft. It was at this event that he knew what he wanted to be.

As a small boy in the shadow of the great aircraft, he had watched in fascination the daring swooping and diving by the pilots of the Blue Angels and he knew then that he had to fly. He built models as he grew up and watched every air show, movie and television show he could about aviation and space travel. Eventually he even flew some of his own models and was behind the controls of his aunt's small plane at the age of ten, with his aunt "helping" him, of course.

When personal computers began to arrive in homes, his father bought one and added the first rudimentary home flight simulator to it. It wasn't uncommon for him to fly "missions" of four hours or more, since the simulator ran in real time. The graphics were horrible, but it never bothered him. He was flying, if only in the world of the circuitry.

Eventually his dream of flying the fighters and bombers he grew up longing for was dashed by the cruel reality of his vision, or should we say, lack thereof. Glasses, the recruiters all told him, meant no military flight training. That meant there would be no roaring afterburners, no diving down on the enemy, and no glory of the victorious ace. The irony was that he was actually somewhat afraid of heights. He hated tall playground equipment, and during his time in the Army, the three-story towers of the obstacle course terrified him. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that he couldn't fly.

Years later, he picked up a community college catalog and saw within it a commercial pilot program. Glasses wouldn't keep him from that! He'd never been in classes where he felt so at home, among those who also spoke the language of the air. Two years later, he was already flying when he graduated from the program and he was scheduled for his first solo flight. His fear of heights didn't seem to apply in the cockpit, where he could push the tiny training plane around the sky with more ease than driving a car. It almost felt like he didn't need a plane; he flew, and the plane was just along for the ride. He seemed well on the way to finally achieving his childhood dream of flying a great aircraft of his own!

Then fate's cruel hand intervened yet again. A back injury sidelined him for months, during which his flight instructor was hired away by an airline. Ironically, he was injured at work, at a job whose paychecks went to pay for flight lessons. Then came September 11, 2001, and the airline industry spiraled downward. Many of his classmates, fully qualified pilots, were waiting tables at local restaurants; there would be no jobs for him when he was finally ready to take his place in the air. Once again, he sadly turned away from flying.

All he has now are the faded maps and logbook of his training flights and the useless proof that he graduated from every ground school required to be a commercial pilot. He still goes to the air shows and he still sits in the seats that should have been his. Sometimes he parks at the airport and critiques the technique of landing student pilots, knowing that he should be up there teaching them himself. He still looks at that photograph of the man sitting in the cockpit, the man who would be a pilot.

Health and age have combined to ensure that he will likely never return to the air in the pilot's seat.

The would-be pilot is all the pilot he will ever be.