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Leisure Travel ENJOYING LIFE WITH YOUR PLANE
Pilot’s Lament: My Wife Won’t Fly
 Just last week I flew in a Skyhawk from Bedford, Mass., to Niagara Falls. In the right seat was that special person in my life--someone I knew would appreciate the chance to get away with me in a small plane to one of the world’s most romantic spots.
We did a quick but spectacular aerial tour of the Falls, landed, crossed the Rainbow Bridge to the Canadian side, and walked to a full-on view of the spectacular Horseshoe Falls. Placing my arm around my companion, I smiled and said, “Aren’t they beautiful...Uncle Sheldon?”
I know, I know, something’s wrong with this picture. Don’t rub it in. I wanted my wife of 25 years to be there with me. But she’d rather slam her fingers in a car door than go soaring into the open blue in a small plane with me at the yoke. At this point I know better than to even ask.
Almost three years ago I confessed in these pages that my wife wouldn’t fly with me. She had a litany of reasons: Small planes stop working and tumble out of the sky, the flight would be horribly turbulent and get her sick and terrified, I’d make a mistake at the controls and leave our three children orphans.
As it turns out, the my-significant-other-won't-fly-with-me club is a big one, and the cost of membership can be surprisingly high. I’ve met several pilots who have said that their spouses’ refusal to join them in the cockpit was a major factor in an eventual divorce—and I’ve met several ex-pilots who blame their spouses’ horror of small planes for having left flying behind.
By that measure, I guess I’m lucky, and for two reasons: I’ve been able to juggle my flying and my marriage without significant damage to either; and—please cross your fingers here and/or knock on wood on my behalf—I’ve been making progress with getting my wife to consider flying. Okay, slow progress. We’re talking baby steps here. But hey, what’s the hurry? I intend both to keep flying and stay married for a long time.
Let’s review the strategy. Bear in mind that while you might think I’d be the last person in the world to give advice on the subject of getting your significant other to fly with you, the fact is I’m highly motivated, and I did my homework here. Remember: This is not about being devious or selfish. I’m not trying to trick my wife into flying with me so that I’ll get more enjoyment out of aviation. I’m trying to help my wife get over the less rational part of her fears so that I can share an important part of my life with her.
Step 1: Knowledge is power. Much of my wife’s fear of small-plane flying came from wildly inaccurate notions of the risks exacerbated by distorted news coverage of crashes. Here’s where I’ve really made great in-roads, by explaining (and whenever possible letting others explain) that a plane can glide to a landing even on the very rare occasion of an engine out, that icing is easy to avoid, that the wings are actually stuck on pretty solidly, and that, most important, the accident rates are in the ballpark of automobiles. And here’s a trick I’ve picked up: I used to try to avoid talking about the crashes that TV news loves to play up. But now I gently push my wife to take a good look at the details, because they almost always reveal that the pilot did something that my wife has faith I wouldn’t do, or that something about the aircraft or flight conditions simply doesn't apply to my flying.
Step 2: Lord of the wings. This is another one that’s really worked in my favor. My wife used to find it hard to believe that I was all that much more of a pilot than, say, JFK Jr. Now she ticks my credentials off to others with a certain pride: My instrument rating, my nearly 500 hours of incident-free flying, my obsession with safety, my willingness to cancel flights in the face of any problems.
Step 3: Familiarity breeds relaxation. Simply having seen me time and time again leave for flights and return un-mussed, and having heard from dozens of people over and over again how much fun it is to fly with me, how comfortable the flights were (usually), how safe they felt, and how great the destinations were, my wife can’t help but get the message that flying isn’t an arduous, daredevil, traumatic affair.
Step 4: Air conditioning. Here’s where I’m a little stuck. Most psychologists agree that the best way to get someone over their fears is to expose them to the source of fear in very small doses under reassuring conditions. My plan was to first have my wife watch me fly a flight simulator, then on another day take her to the airport to look at planes, on another day have her sit in a plane, another day taxi around, and so forth. But my wife is no dummy–she knows where the trail is leading, and simply argues that since she doesn’t like the idea of the last step in the process, which is actually flying, there’s no reason for her to go through the earlier steps. This is some sort of psycho-aviation version of Zeno’s paradox—you can’t get where you’re going because you’ll always have another halfway mark ahead of you—but I’m not sure how to get around it.
Still, it’s clear that my wife is a lot more comfortable with the idea than she used to be. She now sometimes says she can imagine going on a short flight with me to one of the islands off the Massachusetts coast—a dream destination for most pilot spouses around here. And she’s given serious thought to taking a spin around the pattern with an instructor, which would be a big step. Perhaps most encouraging, she has said I can take my 17-year-old flying with me—although the recent widely covered crash of a New England family has led to a (temporary, I hope) rescinding of that allowance. One thing I know for sure is that she used to get frantic if I was delayed in calling her on landing. Now she sometimes seems surprised to hear from me when I call—my flying has become so routine to her that she often doesn't even think about it.
Maybe I could be doing a better job, and there’s a smarter pilot than myself out there who could have told me how to get my wife in the air long ago. But until I hear from him or her, I’m going to assume I'm doing all right. After all, I’ve avoided the real danger: letting her unwillingness to fly become a wedge in our marriage. And in some ways it’s a good thing that she doesn’t fly with me. It keeps my flying from completely overrunning our lives, it ensures that I have plenty of quality time in the air with brothers, friends, and, yes, Uncle Sheldon, and it makes me appreciate the fact that I really do enjoy a mostly shared life with my wife.
Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’m still determined to get her up there.
—David Freedman
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