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Couples & Cockpits: Do They Mix?
by Amy Laboda | Illustration by Hal Mayforth
It would seem to be every pilot’s dream—I married someone I met at the airport. My husband and I are both pilots, and we fly together. And yes, we are happy. That said, our cockpit has not always been a place of perfect harmony. At different points in our nearly 20-year relationship, we have flown together with all the professionalism of an airline crew, and, occasionally, with the pandemonium of a Friday evening sitcom.
Not every family is … ahem … blessed to be a two-pilot household. And yet after surveying many couples in which one or both held ratings, I’ve discovered that the qualities that make for a good relationship invariably carry over into the cockpit.
Patience, respect, and learning to live with the other person’s quirks go along way toward maintaining a happy cockpit, whether both people are pilots or not.
My Story
My husband, Barry Marz, is a captain with a major airline and flies frequently. I, on the other hand, fly only a few times a month, and I’m always struggling to stay current with my instrument flying skills.
When we travel together in our Cessna 182, I fly left seat and Barry is copilot in the right seat. I actually have to remind myself to let my husband fly from time to time so that I can get a bit of practice with the radios and navigation equipment.
“Everyone wants a chance to ‘play with the toy,’” Barry says. “When neither pilot gets to fly enough, I can see where it could be a problem. It really helps our cockpit relationship that I fly a few days a week, so I’m not ever feeling like I have to fly the Cessna.”
Being big planners, we always sketch out a flight plan and brief it before we get in the airplane. We typically agree on just about every aspect of how to get from Point A to Point B, but every now and then, we need a referee.
Last summer on a flight when the cumulus got to towering and clustering so thick that I knew we could no longer out-climb them as we passed through 12,500 ft. I insisted on, and then initiated, a spiral descent through a hole down to 1,500 ft., and rolled out on the only heading that took me toward sky that I thought was clear.
Barry, the copilot navigator for this leg, suddenly piped up. “Hey, you can’t go there! It’s restricted,” he said, slapping the low-altitude IFR chart for emphasis. I looked down at my moving map display on our GPS and saw no special use airspace depicted ahead. “I don’t think so,” I replied, concentrating on keeping our craft straight and level in the considerable chop beneath the cloud base. “Call approach control and ask.”
“Ask? I don’t have to ask! It’s right here!” he insisted. “You have to turn right now!” (Editor’s note: Notice how even in this situation, it’s the male of the species refusing to ask directions.)
At that precise moment, a right turn would have taken us into a black cloud. I don’t do black clouds. Not VFR. Not IFR. Not ever. “Okay, I’ll ask,” I said. “Hey approach, is there a restricted area at my 12 o’clock?” I chirped into the mike.
“No ma’am. Just an alert for concentrated flight training from the base, that’s all. You are okay on your current heading,” the referee hade spoken—and the tension evaporated.
I got what I wanted, and my copilot got what he wanted. And we let go of it, because that is what you have to do if you want to successfully fly together. If either of us was the type to hold a grudge, we’d be in trouble, for sure.
Sleeping On The Job
Most couples who fly together have had to make adjustments to their relationships so that they could “handle” being together in the cockpit, particularly when one person isn’t a rated pilot.
For example, one husband, who is not a pilot, found that the best way to avoid stress while his pilot wife was flying was to simply fall asleep.
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A surgeon by trade, this doc had perfected the art of sleeping absolutely anywhere, at absolutely any time of day. So conditioning himself to drift off to the hum of the rented Cessna’s Lycoming wasn’t too tough.
The good news? The technique achieved complete cockpit harmony, and his wife always felt that he had so much confidence in her ability to fly that he felt comfortable sleeping.
The sleeping, worry-free non-flying spouse routine actually cuts across gender lines. That’s to say, wives use it, too, to keep from getting too involved with piloting while sharing the cockpit.
Whether it’s because they actually dislike flying, dislike being used as a human-lapboard, or they dislike constantly being “taught” to fly by their enthusiastic partner, more women tend to be non-participants than men in the cockpit.
One woman even declined to sit in the right seat, and had her husband wire the intercom with a CD stereo, so that she could zone-out to music during the long flights they routinely took commuting between homes.
Enthusiastic Partners
On the other end of the spectrum is Ronnie Strickland, a grandmother several times over who sports a coiffed hairdo and manicured nails. She’s often seen tucking her locks into a helmet and climbing into the back seat of her husband’s bumblebee yellow North American T-28 to accompany him to air shows, without so much as a protest. And believe me, the T-28 isn’t made for dozing off.
Another involved non-pilot spouse is Jeannie Whitty, who has shared the cockpit with her pilot husband, Jim, for more than 30 years. While Jim is sorting through complicated re-routings in IFR weather, Jeannie will hold headings and effectively fly the airplane from the right seat.
“She’s the best autopilot I could have,” chortles Jim, when asked about Jeannie’s piloting skills.
Sure, it would be great if your non-pilot spouse worked just like an S-Tec 60 with altitude hold and GPS coupling, but let’s face it, they’re only human.
Perhaps the toughest relationship a couple can have is when one spouse learns to fly, and then the other spouse decides it is their turn.
It becomes difficult for the spouse who already knows how to “do it” to contain him or herself, and, whether a certified instructor or not, the pilot is almost always found trying to teach the new student at every opportunity.
Sometimes this is okay, like when the pilot is doing the flying and he or she just describes each procedure out loud to the student spouse who is observing in the right seat. And sometimes it’s not, as when the “teacher” insists the student do the flying from the right seat in conditions that the student’s real CFI may not have exposed him or her to, yet.
Putting the student in the left seat when you are not an instructor is simply illegal—don’t do it.
Checklist For A Happy Crew
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In theory, a cockpit crew made up of two people that love and trust each other on the ground should be the safest, most pleasurable crew combination in the sky, right? Then why do so many couples have trouble flying together?
My theory is that they haven’t figured out some critical cockpit management skills that airlines teach their crews from day one. These simple rules will help you and your spouse enjoy flying together, whether you both are pilots or not.
1) Divide and conquer. Sort out the duties of the pilot flying and the non-flying person (pilot or no) ahead of time. A typical division of cockpit labor in my airplane goes like this: the pilot flying handles all aircraft controls, including the throttle, prop and mixture. The radio tuning, radio calls, and navigating (also known as knob-twiddling) is done by the non-flying person. The pilot flying and the non-flying person both have their own GPS in our airplane—and we both manage the fuel, keeping track of the amount burned out of each tank and calling out loud when a tank is switched or needs to be switched.
2) Brief each portion of every flight. “By briefing we guarantee that there will be no surprises during the flight,” says pilot-spouse John King. Surprises are scary, and you don’t want to scare your co-pilot.
3) Use a checklist, the challenge and respond kind. This way one person, usually the non-flying person, reads the checklist, and the pilot flying does what’s required and responds. It works for the airlines, and contributes to their exemplary safety record. It will maximize your safety and efficiency, too, providing a double-check of every item.
4) Back each other up. This means that you must speak up if you suspect the other person has made a mistake or missed something, but don’t be nasty. Safety is paramount, and a couple in the cockpit is safer if they function as a team. We’ve all been on teams before, in sports, and at the office. We know how to communicate with a certain professional etiquette in those situations. Don’t throw that civility out the window just because you’re married to the other person. “Communicate ‘just the facts’ to your captain when you spot a problem,” says Martha King. No nitpicking. No blaming. If the sink rate is excessive, state the rate, don’t berate your partner. And you, captain, must respond in kind, so that the co-pilot knows that the information has been conveyed. “Don’t let the situation get dangerous,” say both Kings.
5) Sterilize the cockpit. That doesn’t mean swabbing it down with Lysol! A sterile cockpit is where there is minimal conversation other than that which directly pertains to the flight. It lends a clean, professional atmosphere and helps keep communication between the captain and co-pilot civil.
6) Leave your differences—and love spats—on the ground, ideally in the FBO parking lot or in the garage at home. Don’t even think about flying together in the middle of a major tiff. Pilots who fly for a living learn early how to compartmentalize emotions so they can focus on the myriad of details that make up their missions. You have a mission, too—your flight—and you need your full frontal cortex to get it done right. Sure, the formality might seem awkward at first, but it really does work. “The civility that Martha and I work at in the cockpit actually enhances the fun we have when we fly,” says John. “It keeps us communicating, and prevents misunderstandings or cross purposes.”
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Two Heads Better Than One?
The best scenario for flying couples, hands down, is when both partners are pilots. I’ve also discovered that the more advanced the couples’ ratings, the easier it is for them to fly together.
And typically, the relationship a couple has on the ground will mirror—for better or worse—the relationship they have in the cockpit. If a couple has a solid, equal relationship in life, that will translate into a generally happy cockpit.
For example, I’ve taught couples to fly, and I pride myself on giving them cockpit resource management skills that will help them get along with each other while flying together. In one instance, a flight review a year later showed that I wasn’t as successful as I thought. The dominant personality of the two had pretty much taken over the left seat, leaving the other spouse to handle the radio and navigation. It was easy to see who was happy with the flying they were doing, and who was not.
Squabbles between spouses in the cockpit are rarely precipitated by big events, such as getting lost, or a real emergency. Rather, most problems crop up over stylistic differences between the way two different pilots fly.
“We have a rule in our cockpit,” says John King, who regularly flies a myriad of different two-pilot aircraft with his wife, business partner and co-captain, Martha. “The pilot-not-flying has an obligation to avoid nitpicking the pilot-flying,” he says.
Martha agrees. “We know that both of us have different flying styles. The question you have to ask yourself when you watch your spouse fly is ‘does this pilot’s style compromise safety?’ If the answer is ‘yes,’ then you have to speak up. But if the way that your spouse flies is safe, just different, then you have to learn to let your spouse do it their way when it is their turn at the controls.”
John goes a little further out on a limb with this, remarking that women pilots tend to think ahead more and manage the airplane based on the information they derive from forward thinking.
Men, on the other hand, seem to be quite adept at handling the aircraft—which is good because they may need that superior skill when they get into situations they might not have gotten into if they’d thought ahead more!
Martha says the “cockpit etiquette” she and John enforce on every flight has a positive transfer into their married life at home, and I agree.
“When you learn to respect someone else’s style, be it their flying style, or just the mundane, such as how they squeeze the toothpaste tube or stack the dishes, you’re learning how to live with that other person,” she says.
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“If you love that person, that’s got to be good for the relationship,” she says.
John adds, “If you learn to play to each other’s strengths in the cockpit, or at home, and learn to recognize each other’s aptitudes, you really do make flying together safer, and living together more fun.”
“Remember, your spouse is a volunteer, not a conscript,” says John. “You have to treat him or her that way.”
My own experience, both teaching couples, and flying as one, is that those who learn to fly together as a functional crew fly more, fly farther, and frankly, have more fun. The journey, when you fly together, really is as much a part of any vacation as the destination, and that’s as good as flying gets. 
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