It was time for our weekly lunch meeting of the local aviation mafia, and we were all at the sandwich shop around the corner from the airport. Our group included yours truly and three guys I had known for years from our shared flying experiences.
I remember those long, sun-soaked summer days of my youth, when school was out, and adventure took me to the hills around the airport. It was 1951, and the warm air of Southern California seemed to hum with the constant buzz of airplanes. The Korean War had just begun, and Otay Mesaās NALF Brown Field was alive with training flights. I was a preteen, too young to understand the weight of war, but old enough to know that I wanted to be up there.
Iād hike to the ridges, find a good spot, and watch the R4D Skytrains in the pattern. Navy aircraft like the roaring F4U Corsairs and sleek F9F Panthers would cut through the sky, while the Marine AD-1 Skyraiders thundered low, their propellers chewing up the air. Sometimes, Iād catch a glimpse of the FH-1 Phantoms zipping by, and it felt like the future was unfolding right in front of me. Iād close my eyes and picture myself in the cockpit, feeling the boundless freedom of flight. That dream never let goāit stayed with meāI was hooked.
Fifteen years later, my dream took a different turn. I found myself far from those California U.S.-Mexican border hills, deep in the jungles of Vietnam. As an infantryman, helicopters like the UH-1 Huey became our lifeline, lifting us in and out of landing zones. The roar of the rotors and the pounding of the blades wasnāt the fantasy I had envisioned as a boy. But somehow, it only fueled my desire to fly even more.
A few months after returning from Vietnam, I chased that dream. I began flight training and finally became a pilot, living out the fantasy Iād nurtured for so long. The cockpit became my refuge, the skies my endless playground. I even became a flight instructor, passing on my love for flying to others. Thereās nothing quite like the sensation of lifting off, leaving the earth behind, and finding peace among the clouds. One of my proudest moments was when I took my mother flyingāa flight from Brown Field to Zamperini Field. She was a trooper, a product of the 1910s, and even though she held on tight, she never uttered a word of complaint. She was on my right seat!
Now, at 82, my flying days are behind me. Many of my friends have either passed on or stopped flying, though a few still hold on. I understand why theyāve let it goāage has a way of grounding even the most daring souls. But I miss it deeply. Thereās a magic in flying that nothing else can replicate.
Still, Iām grateful. I lived my dream, from watching planes over Brown Field to becoming pilot-in-command. Even though Iām no longer in the cockpit, the memories of those days still soar with me.
I did take my father flying once before he passed. But I never got a chance with my mother. She was not a fearful type. I have 8mm home movies of her driving at the Zandvoort skid school. She watched me skydiving into our hometown festival several times. And her brother was a private pilot who had taken us kids flying with him.
But age had made her knees less flexible than needed to fold into my Cessna 150. However, some days her knees felt better than others, and thereās was always timeā¦
Soon after she passed I was flying and remembered a story I heard a priest deliver at a funeral. It was about a young college football kid and his devoted father who never missed a game. The two were a fixture at the college, the kid locked arm-in-arm with his dad as they walked the campus together. When his dad passed unexpectedly the night before the big game the coach was going to bench the kid to allow him time to grieve. But the kid insisted upon playing. The coach reluctantly agreed and let him play, whereupon he had one of the best games ever, leading his team to victory.
The coach was amazed - you were so close to your dad, you two walked together everywhere, how could you play so well so soon after his passing? The kid replied his dad had gone blind years ago and so heād lead him around and describe everything to him. However, he couldnāt do that while actually playing football. So that big game was the first time his dad got to see him play.
That night, flying over the midwest, I realized it was the first time my mom got to see me fly.
Kirk, it was the same but different for me. My dad passed when I was 19, about a month before heading back to a well known aviation college for my sophomore year. I had taken my mom up in Cessnas and Pipers but never in a jet. My airline career lasted all of 9 months when my carrier folded, so I went back to corporate and 135. I finally got the opportunity about 10 years ago when she got the chance to ride in a Lear with me as captain. Beautiful fall day, light wind, no turbulence to speak of. Next day she called all her sisters (she was in her early 80ās and the eldest of 5) to tell them. I was so happy. Popular psychology says we all seek approval from our parents to some degree or another. I can agree with that sentiment.
My parents were very supportive of my flying (not so much other pursuits) and were willing passengers. My mom bought me a leather bomber jacket to celebrate my private certificate. My Dad was my second passenger which is the point of this post: I was to meet him at Zahnās, a long-since closed, but very informal, field on Long Island, NY. On short final, I saw him standing next to the runway trying to peer into cockpits of landing planes. Of course, he missed me. When I shutdown and yelled at him to get away from the runway, I realized from his grin just how proud he was. We flew about 5 hours (in a C-150) that day, possibly one of the best days of our lives.
My dad used to take me to the airport every weekend to watch touch and goes. While we stood at the wrong side of the fence, heād regale me with stories of his days flying B17ās out of Britain. One mission, heād gotten jumped by ME 109ās who proceeded to shoot out 3 of his 4 engines. One motor allowed him to limp back across the Channel, and he bellied the Fort in to a farm field. His trusty flight engineer Fuzzy pulled him out just before the ship blew up. It was why he had a Purple Heart and a āsilverā kneecap.
Terrific story. Then one summer Fuzzy showed up to spend some time with us at the beach. I took him aside to get his end of the story. You know, B17, ME109ās, three engines out, the crash, the explosion.
āCrash?ā said Fuzzy. āNah. We got drunk and stole a jeep. Your father drove it into a stone wall.ā
My father had never been a pilot at all. He did work on code machines for the OSS, though.
Many years later, I invited my less-than-truthful father to attend my wedding. He suggested we ought to meet up somewhere first. I agreed. As a pilot now (a real one), I said, āSure. Letās meet at the airport.ā
The same one heād taken me to as a little kid to watch, from the wrong side of the fence, airplanes fly the pattern.
Overhead, I could look down and see a car parked by that fence. He was standing in his usual spot. I landed, taxied up and shut down.
As I walked over to see him (it had been years, mind you) I saw he was crying.
Then, finally, I opened the metal gate and brought him through that damned fence at last.
I did get to take my mother for a ride,once. I had just bought an old taylorcraft and managed to squeeze her into it, for a VERY short ride.
My parents were very supportive of my desire to fly, giving me a 3-week glider school pass as my graduation gift going into my senior year at college. Following graduation, I went to Vance AFB, OK to become an Air Force pilot. Not too long after starting, I received a letter from my Mom stating she has started her pilot training also. I sent a one-word letter home to her - WHY? A week or so later she tells me, āI canāt let there be something that you can do that I canāt do.ā My Dad was in the Air Force also, so Mom is learning to fly in Germany with the local AF fighter pilots. She did experience something I never to hope to experience in a single engine aircraft. Her engine failed on her solo student cross-country, and she landed successfully in a German farmerās field. After she returned to the US, she stopped flying. She felt things were too wild in the US skies compared to the orderly German skies. As a result, she would not go up in a GA aircraft with me, but she would always want to listen to my war storiesā¦
I am thoroughly enjoying all the stories.
My parents had passed by the time I got my pilots license. My dad was a bomber pilot in World War II. Shot down captured escaped captured escaped with the help of the French resistance made it out OK.
Years later, my husband wanted to get to hunting areas quicker so decided he wanted to learn how to fly and buy a Cessna 180. I had zero interest in learning how to fly, but I did want to learn how to get down.
Fast forward. He passed due to an aviation accident in 2020. I now have the right seat open. Raf you can fill that seat anytime.
I was 59 when I learned to fly. I was able to take both of my parents flying. My father was a B-24 pilot who didnāt see combat and didnāt keep flying after the war. I was attending a high school reunion in my home town and took them for a ride, my pilot father in the right seat. I offered to let him fly a little. He took the controls and promptly threw my Cherokee 6 into a 45 degree bank. I heard a massive intake of breath from my mother in the back through the headset. I told my father to take it easy; he had a nervous passenger in back. He was pretty hard of hearing and I donāt know if he had his headset turned up enough to catch that since he did it again. I took the controls back and finished the flight. He enjoyed it thoroughly but I was surprised that my mother later agreed to let me fly them to the beach without a promise not to let my father fly.
Like other posters, Mom was my first āvictimā after getting my Private. She didnāt like being driven on narrow mountain roads but was fine in the C150, go figure. I had a tendency to fly a high approach and Iām sure Dad received a full briefing before his turn came.
Later on, we flew around the L.A. area at night and on another occasion, struggled to fit into the pattern at Santa Catalina (KAVX) for the $100 dollar hamburger (now $500???+) on a Saturday morning. Fast forward many yearsā¦Neither of them got to ride in the 767 with me up front.
All these great stories brought a tear to my eyesā¦so touching. Thank you
Who is in my right seat? That would depend upon the setting.
In the professional Fortune 500 corporate aviation world, unlike in your airline world Kevin, for the most part my right seater was just as often my left seater with whom we were peers, both of us captains with whom we alternated left and right seats and with whom for the most part we shared a mutual respect and do to this day after retirement. I may have one or two stories about ālong flights on which I have pretended I had to explain aviation to a ninth-century Mongol or a starship captain who needed a liftā, but those stories are too few to mention, and in any case, the mention of those would be beneath my dignity as it should have been beneath yours. I have the utmost respect for most of those who flew right seat with me. I can only hope they have the same level of respect for me for when I flew right seat with them.
The other setting would be in my privately owned 1946 Cessna 120. Yes my wife has ridden in my right seat as has my mother. God bless them for their forbearance. The same for both of my kids and my grandkids. God bless them for the same reason too. Many of my non aviator good friends as well. Bless them all for putting their trust in me.
As for whom I might in my wildest dreams have taken to breakfast in the right seat of my private airplane? Jesus Christ. Mother Theresa. Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Robert F Kennedy, the 1960s version. And though he would have been too humble to include himself in this distinguished company of right seaters, Neil Armstrong would be my right seater on my next breakfast flight. Actually, Iād want him in my left seat. Kevin, would you be humble enough to put Neil Armstrong in your left seat?
I still miss Paul Berge.
John Kliewer
To this day, my mom doesnāt like how I drive. Even though Iām a 777 Captain now, and in my opinion a great driver, she will grip the armrest when Iām behind the wheel. Probably PTSD from teaching me to drive our stick-shift Chevy Chevette in the late 1970s (she and my dad switched off the stressful duty of teaching me and my younger brother how to drive). But she gamely flew with me in a glider several years ago.
I became a soaring instructor when I was a cadet at USAFA, so it seemed like a great idea to give glider rides to my entire visiting family during the graduation weekend at the old Black Forest Gliderport nearby. My mom put on a brave face of support and flew with me in the sturdy Grob. When I found lift and mentioned we could stay up longer, she said āNo, thatās ok!ā After I got us down in one piece, I took my next passengerā¦my great-grandmother. āHoneyā (as we all called her) stepped right into the cockpit up front and was delighted to go fly. I let her have the controls and she really enjoyed flying for a bit. Her laughter after we landed is one of my best memories.
The postscript was that when my great-grandmother was on her deathbed, attended to by my mom and grandmother, my mom related that one of her final requests was asking them if I could come get her in the gliderā¦and then she passed.
āI still miss Paul Berge.ā
Donāt DO that, John! You just sent me on a frantic search to verify that Paul is, indeed, still with us, and apparently still writing. Just not āā¦ on AvWebā at the moment. A little more specificity in such pronouncements, please.
I donāt think Iād want George Washington in the right seat. It looks like he took the thing out of the QRH that holds all the pages together.
I, with all the decades I had as a pilot , the person I would like to be in the right seat was my wife, that never wanted to fly with me, being afraid of an accident that could bring us both to deay. Now, that Iām near 77 years old and with my health certificate revoked this year due to my two cancers, I just canāt even dream that same day that person coul seat in the right seat. Life, sometimes is very harsh to us.
To death, of course and not to ādeayā.
This is an excellent thought experiment! I was lucky to fly quite a lot with my mother and father (a WW2 fighter pilot from whom I caught the aviation but) although it wasnāt always easy to be a son and pilot in command or copilot at the same timeā¦ Iād find it interesting to fly with Leonardo da Vinci. Even if Iād probably find it hard to converse with him Iād love to show him how his flying dreams were developed and would find it very interesting to see his grasp of a technology a couple of centuries beyond his. (I suppose heād understand a lot pretty quickly and say something like āI should have thought of thisā, something probably true for most of the early aviators as well whose main hindrance was a lack of suitable technology to build their designs. Iād be humbled to be offered even a right seat next to a lot of other aviation greats.