Remembering Flying with My Daughter

So I have 3 daughters, but in this post, I am going to share a little story of flying with my youngest daughter Erin. It is particularly interesting timing since she is now grown up and will be flying to Baghdad in 3 days.

I started bringing Erin flying when she was a baby. Of all my kids, Erin seemed to like flying the most, so she got to sit in the right sit whenever she flew. She wanted to not just fly in the airplane, but she wanted to "fly" the airplane. So over time, I would teach her the various elements of flying. Quickly she learned how to fly straight and level, and to follow a course. Well, it was almost flying a course! I would tell her to fly to that big mountain, and she would fly to that big mountain. As we got closer, I would give her another visual point to fly towards, such as that odd shaped lake. This was actually quite a feat if you realize that she was 5 years old at the time.

But the story doesn't end here. When others would fly with us, they noticed that Erin would periodically lower the nose of the airplane into a short descent and then recover the lost altitude. I just thought this was 5 year old flying technique. My passengers thought a 5 year old should not be flying and never enjoyed this technique. I asked Erin why she did this one day, and she answered "Because I'm too short to see over the instrument panel, and I lower the nose so I can see the place you asked me to fly to." I thought this was quite ingenious of a 5 year old pilot and I had not taught her to do that, which I thought was way cool. Several years later, I wonder how she solved this problem in a car?

Anyway, after lots of complaints from passengers, Erin developed a new technique (by now she was 6 years old), and instead of putting the plane into a shallow dive, she kicked the rudder pedals which made the airplane yaw to the left so she could look out her window to see the big mountain or odd shaped lake that she was flying towards. More innovative techniques, but still grumbling passengers over a 6 year old flying them to Nantucket that day.

Go fly little girl!

A proud Dad