-by Bert Botta
It had been a routine flight, right up to the moment that the co-pilot dialed 24000 feet into the altitude selector. As I pulled the throttles back and rolled the nose over to start the descent, our Gulfstream jet responded slowly.
As the autopilot responded to the nose down command, we eventually began a healthy twenty-five hundred foot per minute rate of descent as we departed Flight Level 350 (35000 feet) for FL 240.
Those familiar little bright, white, incandescent puffy clouds that mark a typical early morning in southern Florida speckled the sky just enough to characterize the place.
The sky was clear enough though, so we’d soon be able to cancel our IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) flight plan as we got Jack Edwards Field in sight, there in the deep, hospitable south of Gulf Shores, Alabama.
This was the place I had roamed as a teenage sailor, some forty years before. In the years since, I had accumulated twenty thousand hours of flying time; now I was returning for the first time in the cockpit of a thirty- million-dollar jet.
As we continued our descent, what little sky cover there was beneath us allowed me a clear view of every Naval Aviator’s birthing place, the Training Command at NAS Pensacola (Naval Air Station) seven miles below.
Fear As a Motivator
Up to now, this was just another leg in my reincarnation from “ROP” (retired old airline pilot) to corporate jet jockey flying the rich and famous to their playgrounds. Soon I would realize the completion of a circle that I had drawn in the sand of a Gulf Shores beach as a seventeen-year-old Navy “boot”, forty years ago.
As we passed through Flight Level 310, I was physically comfortable in the left seat of my flying boardroom; emotionally I was forty years away!
I looked out the window at NAS Pensacola and realized that I was descending into the painful past of a frightened teenager. He was a kid who, on paper, qualified for NavCad (Navy Cadet) pilot training. But his thoughts went directly to how tough it would be to earn those coveted gold wings and how little of the “right stuff” he thought he had.
Some of those same feelings of fear and sadness washed over me as I relived the experience of that frightened kid. One could say that the kid failed to seize the moment. Or…..one could say that everything happens for a reason.
A Need to Belong
We continued the descent. As my co-pilot called out the descent check list, my view of the past loomed faster than the land rising up to greet us. He picked up the microphone and checked in with Pensacola Approach Control;
“Pensacola approach control, ExecJet 610.”
“Roger 610, Go ahead.”
“Yes sir, we’ve got Jack Edwards Field in sight. We’d like to cancel our IFR flight plan.”
“Roger, 610, canceling your IFR flight plan, squawk 1200. Good day.”
My thoughts unwound faster than the vertical speed indicator as I slowed the descent from twenty-five hundred feet a minute back to a more leisurely fifteen hundred feet. I needed to get a handle on what was happening. What was the feeling?
Man, it was joy! After all these years of feeling like I didn’t have enough of “the right stuff,” I was finally able to hold my own amongst my Navy carrier pilot “heroes” whom I had secretly worshipped since my time as a sailor in the squadron.
I had effectively ostracized myself by my insecurities from the aviators who I wanted so much to be a part of for the last thirty-seven years.
But now, in this otherwise routine descent into a small airstrip in Alabama, I got it – I was actually one of this Band of Brothers that I had hero worshipped for so long. I would never attain the elite status that my real heroes, the Navy fighter pilots had, but it was close enough for me.
In my persistent pursuit of continuing to do what I loved after retiring from my airline career and signing on with NetJets, the magic of flight had finally offered me a glimpse into that teenager’s soul.
It took that thirty-five -thousand foot perspective, 20000 flight hours and a one-hour flight from Birmingham, Alabama to Jack Edwards Field to gain a new perspective on how far this “wannabe pilot” had come from that 17-year old Navy “boot” forty years ago.