Keep Flying The Plane

When I was learning to be a pilot, my father, a pilot himself, would ride shotgun and run me through my paces in his own plane.

The first lesson was the most unnerving. He had me take the plane to 20,000 feet and get it straight and level. Then he blindfolded me and asked me to climb 100 feet and get the plane straight and level again. Which I did. Then he asked me to make a 90° turn to the north, keeping the plane straight and level. Which I did. He asked me to do various maneuvers involving climbing, descending, turning, and returning the plane to straight and level. Then he said “Do you have the plane straight and level?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you have it trimmed?”

“Yes.” It felt good to make my dad proud.

“Okay,” he said. “Take off the blindfold.“

I was in a dive straight to the ground.

He took the controls, leveled the plane, and trimmed it. Then looked at me. “Never trust your butt. Always trust the instruments. If you’re in the clouds or in the fog, or in the dark, don’t trust your butt. Trust the instruments.”

I never forgot that lesson. It wasn’t that my body had betrayed me. It was that my body was simply the wrong instrument to trust in that circumstance. What I needed to trust, despite what my body was telling me, was the six instruments on the dashboard—airspeed, attitude, altimeter, turn coordinator, heading, and vertical speed indicator. Trusting those six instruments would get me out of the clouds, out of the fog, out of the dark.

Then he made me practice emergency landings over and over. He drilled into me this maxim: keep flying the plane. If you get into trouble, he said, panicking won’t help you. Wishing you hadn’t made that decision twenty minutes ago to follow the river won’t help you. Looking for a flat meadow that isn’t there won’t help you. You have to keep flying the plane.

So we flew over the broad Gallatin Valley and got into imaginary trouble. My dad would say “you just lost an engine.” Then I’d have to keep flying the plane. That would mean having already been on the lookout for a suitable landing place. It would mean practicing circling as I descended, watching the instruments, and overriding my sweaty hands and face. My job was to keep flying the plane. My job was not to pay attention to my nerves, not to pay attention to my regrets, not to let wishful thinking see what wasn’t there. My job was to keep flying the plane.

And so it is now. Our job is not to ruminate over what could have been, to be furious over what is now, to wish for something other. Our job is not to fly by the seat of our pants. Our job is to keep flying the plane—despite how scared we feel or how limited the options. We need to watch those few indicators that matter and put everything else out of our head. It is only then that we will be able to get through the clouds alive, see what is to be done, and to recognize the way forward when it arrives.

I feel sorry about a lot. I am angry about more. I’m scared unlike I’ve ever been scared in my life. That’s simply true. It doesn’t help me. What helps me is to remember my one job: Keep flying the plane.

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Keep Flying The Plane with Susan Edsall

Writing is how I make my way through the thicket of what we’ve made of this planet we’re on. It takes me a long time and lots of words. Social media mystifies me. How do so many people have so much to say, so quickly, and with such resolute certainty? That said, please join my email list.

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