Good sports

The happy smiling couple you saw in the previous post are K and M. I used to work with K and about a year ago, she married M. The more cynical amongst you might point out that they are happy and smiling because they took the photo before getting in the plane!

But no, they were still happy and smiling once we’d completed our flight as well.

You have to realise just what good sports the pair of them are. K doesn’t actually like small aircraft and M has only met me once before. Quite frankly I was incredibly flattered that he’d even consider getting in the plane with me, but hey, apparently he did. He strikes me as a fairly pragmatic guy, his reasoning being that someone gave me a licence so I must be relatively safe.

K, well K is just incredible, self-confessed nervous before we even got in the plane. But also please bear in mind that K has been with me through out every hurdle in this epic journey. She’s heard firsthand accounts of every single problem I’ve encountered, every single thing I’ve f#cked up and every single thing that scared me. I honestly thought that would leave her extremely reluctant to set foot in a plane with me. I mean it hardly inspires confidence does it?

K has a slightly different and probably unique perspective on the situation though.  She said something along the lines of “if I get in a commercial plane, I’ve never met the pilot. I don’t know if they are having a bad day, if they have decided to cut corners because they are in a hurry or if they’ve just come straight from the bar. I know you. I know how much you’ve trained for this and all the emergency stuff you’ve had to practice. I can see what is going on”

Turns out that K has control issues just like me!

K and M were awesome to have as my first passengers. The right mix of keen and but realising subtle things like when I said “I’m about to get busy” I really needed them to be quiet.

Despite rating herself as “mildly terrified” at one point, we had barely touched down when K was enquiring as to when we might be able to go up again!

In return for the flight, K especially was very willing to provide useful feedback as to what passengers want or need to hear from their pilot.

Being a pilot isn’t just about flying a plane, it’s also about managing your passengers. And that’s a whole other blog post!

But anyway, thanks for being awesome passengers guys!