Piloting a Small Airplane is Surprisingly Aspie-Friendly

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I recently got into taking flying lessons at an airport near my home. From what I heard, it was once used to store US Air Force planes, but was demilitarized long time ago, and is now used almost entirely by businessmen with pilot's licenses and civilian flight schools. I took a lesson there on piloting a Cessna three times already; once in December 2010, and twice this year. This allowed me to get a balanced view on the whole thing, so I thought I'd share my thoughts. All times, I was accompanied by an instructor. I was told I need to at least 10 hours of flying experience to fly solo. And as of now, I'm only allowed to fly during fair weather on clear days.

"How is it aspie-friendly?", you might ask. First of all, it's just you and the open air space, with ground below you, and you can enjoy the view at your leasure (provided you keep the plane level at all times, of course). You are accompanied by an instructor, but you can talk to him as little or as much as you feel comfortable, and most conversation is aviation-related and not small talk. You're more than welcome to ask about the instrument panel and the airplane parts, as well as address any concerns you may have about flying itself. Extensive social skills, other than knowing how to speak authoritatively and politely at the same time, are not necessary.

Second, while you do have many incoming stimuluses to deal with, they are not coming to you continuously or all at once. Rather, they come individually or in short bursts. The rest of the time, your main goal is to keep the plane level, using either the horizon and/or the instrument panel for reference. For instance, you're flying and a wind gust tilts the plane 30 degrees back, so your nose is now pointing upwards. With some effort on your part, you push on the steering wheel to level out the plane, and the horizon is once again in front of you. Stimulus addressed, problem solved, moving on. You continue to move the steering wheel by millimeters, as needed to keep the plane level. Then you have to turn right to align yourself with a runway. You turn the steering wheel, and feel the plane tilt to the right. Once you can see the runway through the propeller, you're set. Stimulus addressed, problem solved, moving on. You don't have to address two things at once, at least not until you become more advanced. And you can stop at any level you choose.

Third, learning aviation required a great deal of memorization and dedication to a few isolated topics, a hallmark of AS. You're required to learn about physics of flying, meteorology, effect of atmospheric conditions on flights, and detailed information about different parts of the airplane. This kind of thing comes naturally to aspies, much like social skills come naturally to NTs. For example: you learned that it's best to avoid flying over large parking lots during the summer, because they contain fast-rising pockets of hot air that can make it difficult to keep the plane stable. Having a natural propensity to remember scientific facts will help you fly better.

Fourth, when you fly, you almost have to hyper-focus on what's in front of you and do what NTs call "not think too much about everything". You have your horizon, your ground for navigation, and your instrument panel. (Small planes can't fly higher than a mile, because the air is too thin to hold them up, so you'll always see the ground.) You can cycle through checking each "component", but for the most part, you can't help but just focus on the flight and short-circuit any stray thoughts that pop in your head, something NTs can do naturally, much like aspies can hyper-focus naturally.

All in all, I liked flying a small plane very much, and plan to do it in the future. Being in the air, flying the thing, and just focusing on nothing but that, allowed me to come as close to meditation as I ever could. When I landed, I felt a strange combination of a natural high and a peaceful feeling. Heck, when I tried meditating on the ground (well, at home, to be exact), all I ended up with is a headache and a lot of anger. Anyway, I hope this long post helped illustrate my thoughts. Now, post your thoughts on it.

That's great. I already have an interest in planes and learning all the technical features sound fascinating.

Question: Were you nervous at all about getting off the ground? I'm pretty much scared of driving because of all the other cars on the ground and following all those road signs but I'm scared of heights too and being in control of my transport hovering over the ground. Still, I always thought I'd be a better pilot than driver because of the whole sensory overload thing.

I'm also distracted by my own thoughts. I don't even think medication would help me too much because it either balances out my brain chemicals or it does completely the opposite and fires off way too many neurotransmitters and er, makes me feel a bit edgey.

That is really interesting Aspie1. I plan on getting my pilots license within the next 10 years, it sounds like a dream come true.

I hold flying a place among my dreams. I never flew in my life, though. I had to deal with ships, I don't like ships that much. I bought an RC heli a couple of months ago, but I find it very hard to fly. I think my sense of space is not so good, when I have to project the coordinates of the model to my actual coordinates.

The nervousness was minimal. I knew what I was getting into right from the start, so getting off the ground was actually the fun part. Honestly, I found it easier to control the plane in the air than on the taxiway. Because on the ground, you use pedals to steer the plane, rather than accelerate and brake. (Those functions are controlled by the throttle, which I wasn't trained on yet.) In the air, you use the yoke (steering wheel) to steer, which came more naturally, since I drive a car.

I'm also one of those people who thinks a lot. But in the air, due to having to constantly perform navigation checks, such as looking at the compass, checking the instrument panel, moving the yoke to level out the plane, plus keeping yourself calm when wind gusts rock the plane, you don't have much time to "think". You generally do what you've been trained on (more and more at each lesson), and the instructor does the rest. Then, when you're licensed to fly solo (not for a while for me), you do everything yourself.

I flew a lot in a small plane with my father many years ago, and he described cross-country flying as "hours of boredom interrupted my moments of sheer panic"! But of course, much of that is greatly dependent upon the current weather.


Do you know the stall angle of the plane you have been flying? At 30 degrees nose-high, I would guess its forward motion would stop, thereby rendering its elevator (controls) ineffective.


That may be true of training, but there is no place to park a plane in the sky!


I would tend to agree there, but getting the related "ground school" into some real-life experience can be a tedious proposition for those of us who have difficulty learning directly from books.


Yes, and especially since every landing is actually a "controlled crash"!

My father eventually got all the way to having a commercial license, but I have no idea as to how many thousands of dollars it cost him to finally get there. So personally, I have found a high-quality simulator to be my own best substitute ... and neither my father nor my brother could ever land a plane safely there!

I have about 30 hours and have to say it is the only time where i feel right in the world. I love it and it loves me.

Looks like people here agree with the fact that flying a small plane is aspie-friendly. I also noticed that communicating with the control tower does not require a lot of social skills, either. You don't have to worry about the "right" voice tone and showing the "right" emotion in the voice. Quite the opposite: you're practically required to talk in a flat, firm voice, to prevent the emotional inflection from interfering with the information being given. A typical conversation goes something like this:
"Control tower, this is November-nine-<garbled>-echo-bravo."
"Say again tail number."
"November-nine-four-five-echo-bravo!" (N945EB, the FAA registration ID or "tail number")
"November-nine-four-five-echo-bravo, this is control tower. We read you."
"Requesting permission to land. Clear runway."
"Affirmative! Proceed to runway six." OR "Negative! Circle airport until we update you."
"Proceeding to runway six." OR "Circling airport, awaiting update."
"Thank you. Out."
(Words "yes" and "no" are never used in aviation, except in casual dialog. "Repeat" is also never used, because it's an attack command in the US Air Force.)

I enjoyed this type of communication a lot. After all, it's very verbal and content-oriented, and presented in discreet chunks. Many less-essential words, like articles, conjunctions, and some prepositions are dropped. The important thing is to make the message clear by enunciating words, faster or slower, however you're comfortable. And every important statement is repeated back, to make sure it was understood. Heck, it's an aspie's dream . Now, I wasn't trained on it yet (it'd probably require at least an hour of ground school), but I observed my instructor talk like that, and thought it was something I'd have no trouble mastering.

For now, I'm aiming for a sports pilot's license at most, given the time and expenses required to get anything higher. And since I can't afford to fly more often than once a month, it might take a while. But I'm keeping my options open; hey, you never know.

Couldn't have put it better if I had tried, Aspie1. What's not to love about a sport/profession that emphasizes attention to detail, specialized knowledge and a minimum of superfluous communication?

Learning to fly a plane has been on my bucket list for about 8 years now. But for now, I guess I just have to stick with flight simulator.

Now that I think about it, my tone of voice is almost exactly like an air traffic controllers.

Growing up I was fascinated with planes and flying ("Learning to Fly" is one of my favorite Pink Floyd songs), but I didn't give much thought to actually getting into a cockpit until about two years ago, when one of the professors I had worked with at the university took me up in his Piper Cherokee. When I got online and looked into the costs of actually learning to fly, I thought that "I could do this" and it all took off from there. I finished my PPL a few weeks ago and am looking to start on an instrument rating and perhaps work towards a commercial license.
I've had people comment on how well I communicate on the radios. The local airport here is Class D (towered), so right from the first lesson we were talking to ATC. There are a few uncontrolled fields in the area, but even then one needs to state intentions and positions.

I've never been nervous about flying, except for before my first solo (though when the instructor got out of the plane, I was actually feeling quite confident) and leading up to the checkride. I'm more comfortable being cleared onto a runway that once handled Air Force One than I am merging onto a busy highway.

The bare minimum to get a private license is 40 hours (depending on the type of school), but most people take quite a bit longer. I have a whole page in my logbook of just "pattern" work (basically doing a take-off, circling the runway, and then landing again). It does get quite expensive (the local flight school rents a Cessna 152 two-seater for $90/hour including fuel, not including instructor time), but it's been very satisfying

Last edited by WillMcC on 05 Jun 2011, 3:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Calculated calm!

I love flying, and I took the ground school class, and passed the FAA exam. But I didn't have the money at the time to complete the hours in the air with a CFI, so I would still need to do that (and repeat the FAA exam) if I were to go through with it now. I hope to some day, when time permits.

I think it's the perfect activity for Aspies, as you are completely in control, and in your own world up there. I am sure that there are exceptions, but most Aspies I know (and God willing, myself included), are good safe drivers and should be safe pilots. My only fear is the radio, as I hate to talk on 2-way radios. I can overcome that if needed, but I wish it weren't necessary to do that to fly. Of course it IS necessary, especially at non-controlled airports, to talk to all the other pilots on Unicom so as to have all your plans straight, and know what the other guy is going to do. I'm OK at the radio skills, but I have trouble hearing the first few syllables, as with any conversation. I most always have had to ask to repeat, or the other person in the plane has to repeat it for me.

I don't panic in bad situations, and that's also a good thing for a pilot (in fact it's a MUST). Once, I was riding with a friend in her plane to go to lunch up in San Luis Obispo, and she was taken ill suddenly. I didn't panic, since I had some experience, but I knew I didn't want to try a landing at that little airport in San Luis. So I got out the sectional chart and found a HUGE runway at Vandenberg AFB, and was prepared to radio them and declare an emergency and use it to land if it had come to that. Thank Goodness my friend didn't actually pass out, and she was OK after using the sick bag and resting awhile. It was evidently food poisoning, which she got at lunch.

Charles

With the fighter escort and everything else that would have come along with that, that would have made for an interesting afternoon!

Good thinking.

This was one of my initial fears as well, and a common fear for most newer pilots: the fear of saying the wrong thing over the radio and sounding like a complete fool to everyone else on that frequency. It's even worse if you're talking to a controller at a busy airport, as you can all too easily imagine the controller rolling his eyes and drumming his fingers on his desk while the 15 other people listening in on that frequency laugh at you.

However, in my experience, the aviation community welcomes new members and does whatever it can to help out the newcomers. No one will look down on you if you can't remember how to say something in Aviation-ese and have to resort to English. People will gladly repeat themselves if you ask. Controllers will cut you extra slack if you mention to them that you're a beginner. And eventually, with practice, using the radio becomes second nature.

Yes. I had exactly the same trouble when I first began driving a cab ... and I eventually ended up actually doing some dispatching (somewhat like a "controller").