In 2004, as an attempt to bolster a flagging General Aviation population, the FAA created the Sport Pilot classification of pilot certification. This allowed anyone with a valid driver’s license to earn and maintain flight privileges without the need to have a regular Class C medical certification from an FAA-approved Aviation Medical Examiner declaring that he is fit to fly. Ostensibly, if one was healthy enough the drive, they are healthy enough for daytime VFR privileges in uncontrolled airspace, with the ability to earn endorsements to fly in certain other controlled airspace.
Those flight privileges are not without their responsibilities, however. It’s not just a free pass to work around the medical soundness requirement.
In the late 70s I began training for my Private Pilot Certification. I was regularly training in a Piper Cherokee 140 and a brand new Piper Tomahawk. After amassing almost 12 hours, prepping for my first solo flight, life took over with the arrival of my first child. I had to table flight training for a while, but the passion never left.
Fast forward about a decade and I had come to a point where I could resume training. Originally I had trained at a 7,000’ x 200’ field. Second time around I reasoned that if I could learn to fly at a smaller field, I would be able to fly anywhere, so I resumed my training at a 2,000’ x 28’ paved field in Cessna 150s and 152s.
Another 11 flight hours in and life took over again. Costs were rising. So for the next three decades I spent a lot of time with MS Flight Sim.
In 2013 I had my first heart attack. I didn’t even know I was having one at the time, I thought it was an anxiety attack. Twenty-four hours later I had a brand new stent in my heart.
In 2015 a commercial pilot friend offered to take me on a $100 burger run in a 172. I sat right seat while his wife was in the back filming. It was a perfect day, a lovely flight, and a wonderful lunch. On the flight back from the restaurant, my friend let me take the controls (he’s a CFI-I). I immediately got hooked again, but post-heart attack I didn’t think it would be worth the hassle and expense of trying to obtain a Special Issuance medical, and I almost certainly would not be able to obtain a standard 3rd Class medical certificate. Especially at age 60.
A co-worker is an official with CAP, and I related this to him in casual conversation at the office, lamenting that I’ll never be able to fly. He informed me about the Sport Pilot class of certification, which I had never heard of. If I was healthy enough to legally operate a car, I could self-certify for limited PIC flight privileges, he said. I had been away from GA for decades and was unaware of this class of certification, so I looked into it.
The following week I started training in a Cessna 162 Skycatcher. I pored over the books and passed my FAA written exam before restarting the actual flight lessons. It took a few flight lessons to get the touch back, especially with the somewhat twitchy Skycatcher, but I was back in swing in no time.
The hourly training costs from 1979 to 2015 had certainly skyrocketed. In ‘79 I was paying $36/hour wet including the instructor’s fee. In 2015, I was paying anywhere between $144 and $175 per hour for the same.
After an additional 18 hours in the Skycatcher, I reasoned that if I bought my own airplane I could significantly cut down on my training and flying costs. I found a beautifully restored 1946 Ercoupe in Florida and checked it out. It was a little pricey, but she was in really good shape for a 70-year old bird. I had a pre-buy inspection done, we sealed the deal, and I headed home to Maryland. Still a student pilot, I found an instructor who agreed to fly the Ercoupe home from Florida with me to satisfy my long cross-country requirements.
We flew to Florida, I bought the Ercoupe, we gassed up and took off. Two days and 10-½ flight hours later I had my own airplane home with me in Maryland. A week later I was signed off to solo.
Four months and 110 additional hours of solo time later, I passed my checkride and earned my Sport Pilot certificate, in 2016. I spent the next two years amassing about 200 hours per year in that airplane. She’s a great bird, likes to be coddled, and I religiously gave her my best on my meager means.
Then came my second heart attack. I knew it was happening this time, was transported from work via ambulance directly into the cath lab for the matching stent. I grounded myself for several months while recovering from my second stent cath procedure. My personal physician is a former AME, who advised me in an unofficial capacity after consultation with my cardiologist that he saw no reason why I couldn’t fly, I was actually more heart-healthy than I’d been in years.
In the summer of 2019 I began losing weight and was having severe lower abdominal pains. I had dealt with a bout of mild colitis a few years prior, but all had remained in a steady-state of remission. I went to a GI doctor, had the colonoscopy procedure and found that the ulcerative colitis had returned, this time with a vengeance. It returned well into the severe category.
Three weeks later, I am managing the condition now, but have come to the realization that this is a permanent condition, requiring me to be on a regular program of maintenance drugs and proper diet for the remainder of my life to hold the progression back. The disease itself is not a hindrance to flying as PIC, but the maintenance drugs that I’m taking are calling my GA future into question. A side effect of the meds I’m taking is unsteadiness in balance and some minor cognitive issues. Important senses to be at their sharpest when flying; the seat of the pants and sharpest awareness senses.
I take the regs pretty seriously, and will not simply rely on a medical certificate to tell me I’m healthy enough to operate an aircraft. You don’t just get to check it off your list.
As a Sport Pilot we’re honor-bound to do fearless health self-assessments, regardless of the endorsement of health from the Department of Motor Vehicles. Before flying I always go through the IMSAFE and PAVE checklists. If there is the slightest question, I will ground myself, despite any of my desires to do otherwise.
We can always find a million reasons to justify why we would be okay going wheels up.
But we only need to be wrong once.
This is a too-common thread in many unnecessary disasters. Prior to the 21st century I already knew how to fly. In recent years, I wanted to finish my training and learn how to fly safely.
Indeed, for anyone who climbs into the left seat, but especially under the Sport Pilot certification there is an additional level of responsibility we must bear: fearless and honest self-assessment of our medical state. To do anything less is putting the safety of you, your passenger (under SP rules you can only have one), your airplane, and most importantly, innocents on the ground into potential jeopardy.
I got to realize a life-long dream of becoming and being a pilot. I diligently trained. I observed the rules. I made my share of stupid but not too serious mistakes and miraculously survived them, like most of us. I strived to keep safety at the forefront at all times. I earned the privilege of flying. I loved it, and still do.
Alas, time marches on. Sometimes stealthily.
These days my flying is limited to the X Plane 11 flight simulator, flying a simulated Ercoupe for which I hacked the skin to include my tail number on it. It is remarkably similar to the actual real world Ercoupe, but without the flying-brick sink-rate.
I had often wondered how aging pilots know when to hang up their wings. I even asked a few old-timers, and obtained varying degrees of responses. But the general thread amongst all of them was that you won’t know it for sure until you get there.
For those old-timers who have left the wild blue yonder, when you mention it to them, their eyes go distant for a fraction of a second. Perhaps they’re drifting back to that moment they first realized that the time had come. But the flicker of the light in their eyes is not one of complete sadness and remorse, it also has within it that brief twinkle of the love of aviation we all share. It’s a rite of passage, I suppose.
Deciding to sell the airplane and ground myself possibly permanently was an agonizing decision; I turned it over and over for several weeks. Once I arrived at the decision, I have peace, though. The peace that’s in that little flicker. It’s a memory and feeling that will never leave me.