AOPA Pilot Magazine - February 2019 - 22

FLYING LIFE

Does the landscape
shape the pilot?

BY NATALIE BINGHAM HOOVER

How is your home influencing you?
"WE'RE ARIZONA PEOPLE. WE HAVE THE DESERT IN

us," claimed the political ad for an Arizona state senate race. I was watching TV in the lobby of my Phoenix
hotel as I ate my free breakfast before another long day
giving checkrides. Because the FAA recently relaxed its
jurisdiction policy, designated examiners are no longer
limited to their home state. A busy school in Arizona
invited me out to help with its backlog, so there I was,
marveling at the differences between "Arizona people"
and my own folks from the Mississippi Delta.
The desert landscape also was a change. Where the
view from my Cessna 172 is usually full of lush green
trees and flat farmland, I was a little disconcerted to look
down and see nothing but brown sand and the foothills
of the Rockies. I even saw a cactus that was nearly as tall
as the old oak tree in our yard at home. It got me think-

Now imagine airplanes stacked up in that holding
pattern, every 500 feet beginning at 4,000 feet
msl and going as high as 8,000 feet msl.

NATALIE BINGHAM
HOOVER is feeling
the winter blues. If
you need checkrides
in, say, wine country
or a sunny beach
location, give her
a call.

ing-does the landscape actually shape the person, and
more specifically, the pilot?
As an examiner, I have a unique opportunity to
see not only the technical skill, but also the way pilots
make decisions, their comfort level with risk, and more.
After performing nine checkrides in Arizona, I certainly
noticed some differences. For one, because of the great
flying weather, the airspace is a mind-bogglingly busy
mix of IFR and VFR traffic. In Arizona, it took twice as
long to accomplish the FAA's litany of checkride tasks,
compared to in Mississippi. While this time vacuum
made me more than restless, it didn't seem to bother
my applicants that it took 30 minutes to get a takeoff
clearance or that we had to fly nearly 50 miles to shoot
an ILS. They were just so resigned, I thought.
I continued feeling sorry for the poor, beaten-down
spirit of those pilots until we came to a strange marvel of pilot teamwork, located south of Phoenix, called
"The Stack." Picture, if you will, a VOR that is the initial approach fix for multiple approaches into various
airports. Now imagine airplanes and helicopters doing
flight training, stacked up in that holding pattern every
500 feet beginning at 4,000 feet msl and going as high
as 8,000 feet msl. Do you have that cluster of chaos in

22 | AOPA PILOT February 2019

mind? Now picture it uncontrolled. Surprisingly, the
stack runs like a well-oiled machine, with instructors
(no student pilot is allowed to speak on the stack's
CTAF) announcing their position on the radio with
perfectly standard phraseology. I wouldn't believe it
if I hadn't flown it myself.
Here's what the stack taught me about Arizona
pilots: They're not dreadfully resigned to their slow
circumstances. They simply have accepted the fact,
like their desert homesteading ancestors, that for anyone to make progress, we all have to work together. I
saw it several times throughout the following days. An
applicant noticed someone following us too close on
the Stratus-linked iPad. My inclination was to speed
up, but he chose to do a slow 360 to come in behind
the other airplane and create some space. Likewise,
when parking at the end of what was almost always a
two-hour checkride flight, the applicants would wait
on the outlying taxiway-sometimes for up to 10 minutes-if someone's propeller was turning, rather than
pulling onto the ramp and getting in the way.
I come from a land of crop dusters, where the general mentality is to get in the air, get the mission done,
and then get back home. There is relative freedom to
do as we please in the airspace, and the thrill of flying
is ever-present. After most home checkrides, the applicant asks to take a picture with me to commemorate
the joyous occasion. By contrast, no Arizona applicant
requested a picture. Somewhere in the rigidity of their
airspace or the unforgiving nature of their terrain, I
wonder if the fun of flying gets lost? If I go back again,
I'll insist that all of my successful checkrides get a picture taken.
In this time of hoped for political correctness and
careful speech, I'd like to point out that, no, we're not
all the same, and thank God for it. We all come with our
own set of attitudes and ways of navigating life and flying. If you fly long enough and far enough, eventually
you will come across pilots who are unlike you-pilots
who may have something to teach. So, after my long
week in Arizona, I came home again with a renewed
appreciation for the simplicity of operating in my home
airspace. But I also came back with some new lessons
from my Arizona friends: Slow down. You don't have to
rush through this. We're all in this together.
AOPA
www.myaviation101.com

http://www.myaviation101.com

AOPA Pilot Magazine - February 2019

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