For the last few months I’ve been sort of teaching one of my friends to fly. I say “sort of” because technically I’m not a certified flight instructor, or officially, or legally. But that doesn’t stop me from passing on my vast supply of aviation knowledge to the next generation of budding pilots. Or in other words teaching my buddy bad habits that a real instructor will have to spend hours and hours trying to correct. Anyway, we had a lesson planned for today but as luck would have it the weather was less than stellar, light rain, poor visibility and gusty winds. The prelude to a winter storm that’s going to dump up to a foot of snow on Minnesota and Wisconsin, in April, thanks. So I did what any good flight instructor would do, I think, I called my pseudo student and asked if he still wanted to go flying. He asked a few questions about what it would be like flying in those conditions but then asked me “is it safe?” I was taken aback for a moment. Well of course it was going to be safe, “I” was going to be with him. I mean of course I wouldn’t ever let him go up in those conditions by himself, but with me in the plane he’d be safe as……..well something really safe, I tell you what. I was just concerned that he wouldn’t get the best training out of our flight. Well he agreed to come out and we spent almost an hour bouncing up and down the runway while the conditions got worse and worse before finally calling it quits due to the visibility dropping below VFR minimums. In retrospect flying in those conditions taught him a lot. Maybe I have something to teach him after all.
