まっすぐも飛べなかった話

🇬🇧 English

Small confession to start with. I’ve landed a plane maybe five thousand times by now. And if you asked me how many of those landings I’d call genuinely good — the kind where I walk away thinking yeah, that one was clean — the honest answer is two. Maybe three.

Surprising, right? I thought so too.

Let me tell you how I got here. It’s not a heroic story. It’s mostly me being bad at things.

It wasn’t the plane, it was the sea

I was an ordinary high school kid. No special talent, nothing that made me stand out. Just a broke kid from a family that didn’t have much.

The first time I ever got on a plane was a school trip to Okinawa. And you know what got me? Not the plane. When we boarded I just thought, huh, so this is a plane, it’s flying, cool I guess. That was it.

It was the sea. Right before we landed, I looked out the window and there was this blue I’d never seen in my life. It stopped me cold. (Okay — and the flight attendant. First one I’d ever seen up close. I definitely thought whoa, she’s beautiful. I was seventeen. Give me a break.)

But it was the sea that stuck. Somewhere in the back of my head a thought lodged itself: maybe if I did this for a living, I could go see places like that. That was pretty much the whole plan.

Turns out I was terrible

I liked driving. Cars, motorcycles — I was decent, I enjoyed it. So I figured, flying? How hard can it be. Same idea, right?

Reader, it was not the same idea.

I couldn’t fly straight. I mean that literally — I could not hold the thing in a straight line. And meanwhile there’s a test coming up in about a month to see if you can go up alone. Alone! I couldn’t even do a lap without wandering all over the sky, and they wanted to know if I could handle the whole aircraft by myself.

The training cockpit, by the way, is tiny. Smaller than a little kei car. And you’re crammed into this cramped little space while an instructor sits inches from your face and yells. Up close. Really close. I’d never been shouted at from that distance in my life. It felt like I’d walked into some other dimension.

Here’s the strange part, though: I was too busy to even feel scared. When you’re that far behind, panic is a luxury you can’t afford. The worst moments weren’t when I got yelled at — it was watching a classmate get torn apart behind me and thinking, oh no. Am I next?

The instructors from another planet

They were scary, all of them. I can’t even pick one story — it was a whole gauntlet.

But here’s one I can tell now, since enough time has passed. I had an instructor who’d make me do the real thing — actual, full stalls — over and over, the kind of thing you’re really not supposed to be handing out like candy. At the time I hated him. I thought, what is wrong with this man.

Now? I’m honestly grateful. Most pilots never get that. It stuck with me in a way nothing gentle ever would have.

And every one of them, constantly, relentlessly, asked me the same thing: why. Why did you do that. Why does the plane respond that way. On a motorcycle I never thought about why anything — I just rode. That was the first time in my life I understood that getting good at moving through the world is actually hard.

The phone call

At some point it broke me. I was already past twenty — not a kid anymore, and here I was failing at the one thing I’d bet everything on. My parents had scraped together money they didn’t have to send me there. And I was blowing it.

So I called my mom. Crying. I told her, I don’t think I can do this. I might not make it.

And she just said, gently, then come home. It’s okay. Come home.

I remember that phone call more clearly than almost anything.

Here’s the funny thing, though — and this is the part I’d want you to hear. After that call, something in me let go. I thought, fine. If they wash me out, they wash me out. I stopped clutching so hard.

And the second I loosened my grip — I started getting better. The desperation had been strangling me, and once it was gone, there was room to actually learn.

What I actually loved

People assume the joy of this job is the flying itself. Honestly? For me it wasn’t.

What I loved — what I still love — is taking something I absolutely could not do, and slowly, stubbornly, becoming able to do it. That feeling. It’s the best.

I was weak on the instinctive, seat-of-the-pants stuff. But the parts that needed a head — navigation, the calculating, the preparation — those I could grind my way through. Bit by bit it got less impossible. And I want to be clear: even then, I wasn’t good. I was just, finally, catching up to everyone else. Barely.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it. That’s not just flying. That’s everything.

The island, and the blue again

When I finally made it to the right seat and started flying for real, my early work was little propeller planes — carrying people and supplies out to small islands from regional airports.

I still remember the approach to one of those islands. White beach. Coral reef. That same impossible blue I’d seen from a school-trip window years before. And there I was, this fairly hopeless young co-pilot, looking out at it going oh my god this is amazing.

(For the record, I forgot a callout on that flight and the captain let me have it. I was a bad co-pilot. But I’d gotten used to being yelled at, and hey — I was getting paid, and the sea was right there. Priorities.)

That was around the first time I ever had enough breathing room to actually enjoy the view. For years before that, there was none. You’re just hanging on, trying not to fall behind. It took getting paid, and then a good while longer, before I could look out the window and just think: beautiful.

And now?

Twenty-five years on, so what’s it like?

Simple answer: flying is still fun. Landings still don’t always go the way I want, but when one comes out clean, it feels great. (Two or three times in five thousand, remember. I’m not exaggerating.)

I’ll tell you the real one, though, no joke: these days, if a day ends with nothing happening — no drama, everyone home safe — I feel genuinely, deeply relieved. Especially since becoming a captain. I think everyone in this seat feels the same.

And here’s something I still can’t get over. The old thrill of firing up an engine by hand is long gone — but a modern jet? You flip a switch, an automatic sequence takes over, and this enormous engine just… spins up on its own. When I stop and actually think about it, that’s insane. A small everyday miracle I never fully got used to.

The stuff I honestly don’t like

Since we’re being honest, let me complain a little.

• People who are all head and no humility. Doesn’t matter how smart you are. That one gets me every time.
• Lightning. Especially typhoons. No thank you.
• Icing. This one genuinely scares me. On a propeller plane, your thrust bleeds away and a big chunk of your lift just vanishes. It’s no joke.
• Check rides. No matter how many I take, I never stop hating them.

…Though, said out loud like that — next to bad weather or a hijacking, a check ride is nothing, isn’t it. Funny how the brain ranks things.

One thing I’m glad I did, one I regret

Glad I did: I learned to swim as a trainee. I know — random. But it turns out swimming is about the best thing going for a pilot’s health, and I’d hated the water my whole life until then. I still quietly thank that swim coach.

The regret: I wish I’d taken languages more seriously, earlier. Mine is still a work in progress, honestly. I think about all the people I could’ve become friends with if I’d pushed harder. But I’m not giving up on it — still chipping away.

To the kid I was — and to you

If I could say one thing to that twenty-something crying on the phone, it’d be this:

Don’t wind yourself up so tight. It’s just not becoming a pilot. That’s all it’d be. Go treasure that good mother of yours.

And to you, whoever you are reading this — whether you’re dreaming of the cockpit or something else entirely — I think it’s the same door, really. You don’t need talent, or the right family, or perfect conditions. Just do your best at whatever’s in front of you, one thing at a time. A kid who couldn’t fly straight somehow ended up wandering the world. Your version can happen too.

Anyway. If you ever want to ask me something — about the flying, the road there, anything at all — just send me a message. I’d genuinely love to hear from you.