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    To Live is to Fly: Memoirs of an Executive Pilot
    To Live is to Fly: Memoirs of an Executive Pilot
    To Live is to Fly: Memoirs of an Executive Pilot
    Ebook103 pages1 hour

    To Live is to Fly: Memoirs of an Executive Pilot

    By Doris Daily

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    About this ebook

    Dreaming of Learning to Fly? 

    And eventually becoming a Commercial Pilot?

    Have a seat in the airplane's cockpit and be entertained by these memoirs of an enthusiast pilot! 

    Observe fascinating flight experiences, technology, and the beauty and forces of nature. 

    Become captivated by the flying world of a professional aviator during the '80s and early '90s in Europe. 

    And maybe gain also a few pieces of advice along the way for your own flying career…

    "Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return." 

    ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

    LanguageEnglish
    Publisher111Publishing
    Release dateMar 18, 2019
    ISBN9781988664354
    To Live is to Fly: Memoirs of an Executive Pilot
    Author

    Doris Daily

    Die Autorin Doris Daily war selbst viele Jahre als Berufspilotin und Fluglehrerin in Europa und den USA tätig, verlegte ein Luftfahrtmagazin, und schrieb freiberuflich über Luftfahrtthemen, bis hin zu einem Ausbildungswerk für Simulatoren.   

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      Book preview

      To Live is to Fly - Doris Daily

      About this Book

      Have a seat in the cockpit and be entertained by these memoirs of an enthusiast pilot! Observe fascinating flight experiences, technology, and the beauty and forces of nature. Become captivated by the flying world of a professional aviator during the ’80s and early ’90s in Europe.

      Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.

      ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

      Part One

      Early Fascination With Flying

      As a child, I grew up right in the traffic circle of a private airport, next to a US military airfield. I watched all day long helicopters landing or departing, or bi-planes flying over our home. Every weekend I joined my father, spending hours and hours at the nearby airfield. My dad was only fourteen when World War II started and with sixteen he was recruited (he did not voluntarily join) to serve in the air force. At this young age, he did not train to fly fighter planes but to assist the aircraft mechanics.

      However, flying was not on my radar, or at least so far away from me – or was it? Would I ever be able to join these aviators? The technical aspect of airplanes and flying worried me, and no one in the family encouraged me to go for it. I admired the pilots, and even as my beloved red bi-plane crashed and the pilot died, I only thought: At least he died while doing what he loved or something similar. But proceeding the same route as these aviators were out of reach for me: I hated math, physics and everything technical and was more into the arts.

      Fifteen years later, in the early ’80s, a customer of my goldsmith atelier that I had opened in the meantime, offered me sightseeing flights. As I had to attend a jewelry fair later this week, I asked rather for a flight from Munich, Germany to Salzburg, Austria. He agreed and I was excited to fly for the first time in a four-seater Cessna 172. Especially the radio communication during the flight fascinated me. It all sounded so cool!

      He encouraged me to obtain the radio communication license, so I could accompany him on his flights and communicate with the ground, tower, and airway controllers. I immediately signed up for the next available course, learned everything about aviation law and successfully passed the exam. When calling him about finishing this radio communication course, his answer was Great news! Now take the other four classes equally successful and you will finish ground school for your Private Pilot Certificate. Well, and the medical examination certainly. Future pilots will learn everything step-by-step, don’t worry about your aversion of ‘all things technical’, he assured me. It meant learning all about meteorology, aerodynamics, aircraft performance, weight & balance, and navigation.

      Ground School and Flight Training

      My aviation friend convinced me into starting right away, while my knowledge regarding airport procedures, airspaces, and aviation laws had been still fresh. And so I did… The final ground school test had been scheduled for mid-October and I was eager to have my first flight lesson. But the weather did not conform to visual flying at all. It became foggy for two weeks, followed by rain, storms, and even snow flurries, which made flight training impossible. Until Christmas I had only five or six hours logged. It was frustrating – to say the least.

      My instructor was a friendly military jet-pilot and he was off military duty during the holidays (until January 6 in Austria and Germany). He promised to check the meteorological conditions daily, even on holidays. In early January the weather improved a bit and on a sunny and mild Sunday, we went into the air again. But first, we removed piles and piles of snow from the airplane. The topic of this training session was VFR-navigation. In ground-school, we always joked about the term VFR – as visually follow railroads. Not easy when everything was white, covered in snow.

      My flight instructor asked me to find the train tracks to a nearby town. I pointed in the right direction – I was lucky – I had observed a train coming along. Later, he asked me for the name of the tiny village underneath the airplane’s left wing. When I told him, he couldn’t believe it. I explained that I had been frequently hiking during the past years and close to the village was a medieval castle with a lovely Biergarten in summer. Thumbs up for VFR navigating he murmured.

      My First Cross Country: Near-Miss

      In early March the weather improved somewhat and my flight training continued. I was assigned another instructor for three weeks as my main instructor had been deployed to Corsica in the Mediterranean Sea for military training. This instructor had his own airplane leased to the flight school. It was IFR (for Instrument Flight conditions) equipped, which I liked.

      As I was petite, I always carried a cushion with me to help me peek to the nose of the airplane. Now, this instructor showed me how to fly and navigate properly with the help of instruments – which certainly would help me in the future in a critical weather situation.

      Nevertheless, when my main flight instructor returned from his military assignment, we trained a cross-country flight to prepare for my first solo cross country. A week later I had assembled a thorough flight log for my cross-country flight – which was a triangle, each leg only twenty to thirty minutes. But for the first time without an instructor on my side. Exciting!

      The beautiful sunny weather promised a lovely cross-country tour. I departed from Runway 25 of Munich’s airport and climbed up towards the outbound VFR reporting point on the assigned heading. Suddenly another aircraft came into sight, directly flying towards me. In a split second, I remembered the words of my fighter-pilot flight instructor: Do it as the birds do. I pressed my controls forward and tipped the rudder slightly to the right – just in time to avoid a mid-air crash.

      Remembering this incident even years later, my heart still bounces at the thought of this dangerous situation. When it happened, I felt like having a heart attack and had the urge to land right away. Returning back to the Munich-Riem airport was not advisable as it was rather busy in Riem on this day. The next airfield ahead was Landshut-Ellermuehle, to which I descended. It was not on my planned route, but I needed to land somewhere, either to end my cross-country or to have at least a long break.

      After half an hour I had calmed down

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