Copyright © 2005 Michael Maya Charles 

No part of the following may be reproduced
without express permission of Artful Publishing, LLC 

Once upon a time, way back before there was an

FAA—or even a CAA—and airspace was still free, a

wise, old flight instructor was teaching an impetuous

young man to fly. Their trainer, a ratty-looking Bird

CK-1 biplane, had broad, yellow strutted wings, a

faded red fuselage, and a rounded tail with a rather

prominent silver patch on the rudder. The venerable

old Bird’s numerous oil streaks and dull colors spoke

loudly of the many students who flew the big

biplane without thinking about such things as

washing and primping. Two broad strips of white

grade-A cotton tape had been doped beneath the

right wing bow where it had once brushed a fence

post along a rural runway. This was obviously a

working airplane, not some pampered hangar queen.

One particular cold December day, after the

brief flying lesson was over—they tended to be more

brief the colder the temperature—the instructor

invited his student into his small, cluttered office for

a welcome cup of hot coffee. A leaky, drafty shack

near the small strip’s middle, the office measured 10

feet by 10 feet with countless first solo shirttails

covering nearly every square inch of wall space. A

small potbellied stove in the middle of the room

warmed both feet and soul, and made the room feel

cozy, without feeling tiny.

The instructor and his student talked

animatedly about the high and low points of their

flight, with the instructor’s rough hands cutting

graceful flying arcs in the cold air. This behavior

wasn’t called “debriefing” back in the old days; it

was simply part of every flying lesson. In fact, the

good instructors thought this the most important

time spent with a student.

This student—we’ll call him Horatio—had

more confidence than he had a right to with a grand

total of five hours of dual instruction in his logbook;

he was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that

he could already fly an airplane quite well. In fact, he

was sure that these flying lessons were mostly a

waste of time. He told himself (and anyone else who

would listen) that he was only going through this

agony to “get legal.” His meager experience in the

cockpit had given him just enough knowledge to be

dangerous, and his instructor realized that his

student’s confidence was soaring a little too high for

his own good.

While the instructor was patiently recounting

Horatio’s sloppy rudder usage and wobbly

crosswind technique, all quite normal for a five-hour

pilot, Horatio studied a red-tailed hawk spinning

lazily in the sharp-edged air above the hills

surrounding the frozen grass runway. Horatio was

bored. He wished he could be up soaring with that

hawk instead of listening to this old buzzard rattle

on about rudder usage. “Rudders...?” he thought to

himself, “What do I need to know about rudders?

Birds don’t have rudders!”

When the instructor paused to gather his

thoughts, Horatio jumped right into the void,

boasting of his perfect flights with a previous

instructor. He also challenged the old instructor on

his method of teaching spins in their previous lesson,

suggesting that they start the maneuver at a lower

altitude “just to make it more realistic.”

The instructor let Horatio rattle on longer than

he should have, then began to get a little irritated

with this know-it-all, five-hour wonder boy. Finally,

the good instructor stood without a word, and

walked over to the potbellied stove in the middle of

the office. With his back to the student, he offered to

warm Horatio’s neglected beverage.

“Coffee?"

“Sure,” Horatio replied, glad to have the

discussion of his mediocre performance cease.

As the instructor poured the steaming coffee,

Horatio began making a case to the instructor about

how he really ought to be flying on his own by now,

how his previous instructor had been about ready

to solo him before he decided to come to this flight

school, how “we both know that all this dual

instruction is largely a waste of time and money,

anyway,” how his flying skills were “quite special"...

Horatio seemed to feed on his own words as he

spoke, talking without a breath. His instructor kept

silent, pouring coffee steadily until it began flowing

over the sides of the thick, white porcelain cup and

onto the rough wooden table where the student’s

new leather flying helmet and goggles lay.

Horatio at first didn’t notice the scalding black

liquid expanding across the table, soaking his flying

helmet, then dripping off the edge of the table onto

the cold concrete floor below. But the hot liquid

finally found its way to his hand resting on the table

and Horatio jumped up from the chair, pulling his

burnt hand back from the black pool, crying out,

“Hey! Can’t you see that my cup is already full?”

How could this instructor, Horatio wondered, be so

unaware, so thoughtless?

The wise old instructor smiled, finally lifting

the coffee pot from the lip of the cup. “It’s true...” he

began, leaving time between his words for emphasis,

“your cup is very full, and just like this coffee cup, as

long as your cup is full, I can’t add a thing to it.”

**

Like that coffee cup, Horatio was obviously too full of

himself and his new flying knowledge to allow the wisdom of

his instructor to penetrate his untutored brain.

When we learn something new, that new knowledge

opens up whole new worlds of things to learn—a world we

probably had no idea existed the moment before we discovered

this new bit of knowledge. Artful Flying is a doorway to new

worlds of knowing.

But the door to these fabulous new worlds is opened

only from the inside and only we can open it. That act of

opening must be continuous; it takes constant practice to

keep our natural human defensive doors from closing and

our eyes wide open. It takes a quality that the Japanese call

shoshin, or “beginner’s mind.” Beginner’s Mind is the first step

toward Artful Flying, a new way for most of us to approach

our flying.

But, like anything in life, there are a few speed bumps

along the road to Artful Flying, not the least of which is the fact

that no one wants to be an apprentice, a “know nothing,” a

beginner. Being a beginner is inferior, something most of us

avoid. We want to be thought of as experienced, seasoned,

maybe even an “expert” pilot. We want to learn things just once,

and we have little tolerance or time to study something a

second, third—or twentieth time. Yet this is exactly what Artful

Flying demands of us.

As we age, we tend to close the noose around our consciousness,

limiting the things that can make it in. The result is a kind

of hardening of the mental arteries, a close-mindedness not

unlike the young student pilot in the above story. A mind that

’already knows’ cannot learn a single thing. As we saw, a full

cup cannot take another teaspoon of coffee. It just ends up on

the cold concrete floor.

There is risk, too—the risk of looking inferior, less

knowledgeable, inexperienced, or even stupid. Yet, at the end of

the day, what does it really matter what another pilot thinks of

your expertise?

We must be unafraid of making mistakes—we must be

fearless in the face of uncertainty. Our fears often cause us to

defend ourselves, to close up, protecting ourselves from the

very new, scary or untested information that we may need.

The full coffee cup is a symbol for a closed mind, an

unwillingness to learn new things. We’ve all seen examples of

this with inexperienced pilots who think they know it all—and

perhaps with old hands who are firmly convinced they do.

We’ve probably even exhibited this tendency ourselves a time

or two.

Aviation adores time in type, hours in countless columns,

experience in many aircraft, oceans crossed, battered Jepp bags

and crows feet around the eyes. In fact, this country’s whole

culture is based on experts, specialists and professionals. We

expect the most experienced pilot, the one with the gray hair

and worn Jepp kit, to be the most knowledgeable and safest.

But if this were true, these grizzled veterans would never be

involved in accidents. Unfortunately, even pilots with tens of

thousands of hours still have accidents. One of the reasons for

these accidents, one that is not recorded in the final NTSB

report, is loss of Beginner’s Mind.

Beginner’s Mind, as you will see, is an inextricable part of

flying artfully. But it’s just the beginning of the journey, a whole

new world of discovery and joy, the world of Artful Flying.

Artful Flying begins in the mind of the pilot, long before

he or she sits down in the cockpit. It is more philosophy than

procedure, more art than craft, more attitude than aptitude. It is

more about human understanding than the challenges or faults

of our systems or machinery.

There is outer work in flying, involving the hands, feet

and body; we practice that crosswind landing until it feels good

to our hands and behind; we shoot that ILS approach until it is

second nature, until the procedure is burned indelibly into our

short term memory. But there is inner work in flying, too,

involving the head, our thinking muscles—the original

software. This inner work is what we do the least—and need

the most. For years, we’ve heard that about 70% of our flying

accidents are due to human failures. This tells us that with few

exceptions, our machines and avionics are pretty reliable; the

systems that support us mostly serve our needs. What we need

to concentrate on, then...is us. This is admittedly more difficult,

which explains why we’re less likely to try—and less likely to

make rapid or readily measurable progress when we do.

Artful Flying is largely a process of new awareness, yet it’s

a process that is very old. Native American and Asian

civilizations discovered this awareness thousands of years ago.

But only recently have we discovered the importance and

application of these simple, ancient ways in our lives.

Awareness has found its way into the latest “new”

business techniques involving the Tao de Ching; into an

Olympic athlete’s connection with her sport, visualizing her

success and focusing both mind and muscles on a seemingly

unattainable human goal. It is also a part of our relatively recent

discovery of meditation, Tai Chi, kung fu and the many other

eastern disciplines that have found new homes in the West.

Like golf, sculpting, music, marksmanship and many

other artistic pursuits, flying allows the participant to involve

himself as much or as little as he wishes. It is a magical mixture

of left-brain-rational and right-brain-artistic, the perfect stage to

blend technology with the art of ageless wisdom. But here’s a

secret that’s fully grasped only in the doing: The more involved

we become in our art, the more we open ourselves to new

learning; the more we learn, the more we grow—and the

greater the rewards. Finally, through our long-term practice, we

find deeper meaning and enrichment.

WELCOME ABOARD

Some books are written lickety-split—you can’t get the

words on the page fast enough. This book was not. The idea of

Artful Flying was one I began wrestling with well over a decade

ago when I attempted to write all about it in a “Pros Nest”

column for FLYING magazine. Looking back, I realize that

article was a feeble beginning. Soon after it was published, I

realized that I had not yet scratched the surface of this elusive

subject. Reader feedback confirmed that there was much more

to this than could be covered in a 1200-word magazine article.

So began a journey from that simple article to the book that you

hold in your hands. Like many worthwhile journeys, it was a

long, tortured, joyful process. Simple concepts, I found, are

hardest to explain.

I wrote this book on the backs of business cards, countless

scraps of low altitude or sectional charts, discarded approach

plates, and occasionally a notebook computer. It was composed

at FL350 over the North Atlantic and standing in line in busy

airline terminals, waiting for harried ticket agents to finish

checking in the impatient hordes in front of me. It was

composed while running through Narita’s rice paddies, down

the Seine River and in countless Starbucks on this side of the

globe. Often, ideas were leavened in late night conversations

with great minds, many not at all connected with aviation.

I have nothing new to sell here; nothing to make you “feel

good—fast!” Rather, what I am offering is nothing less than the

possibility of a shift in our human selves, a new perspective

perhaps, in our long-held philosophies. I believe strongly that

the advances and increasing safety in aviation will come from

these changes. These changes are difficult, even maddening at

times. Yet they are a great way to revitalize every one of your

flying moments. Flying doesn’t have to be “Hours and hours of

boredom, punctuated by brief moments of sheer terror.” There

is another way; it’s a lot more enjoyable—more engaging—and

it’s called Artful Flying.

Though I’ve been lucky enough to fly a couple hundred

types of flying machines over the years, including homebuilts

that will nearly fit in the trunk of your Acura, high speed

pocket-rockets that leap tall buildings in a single gulp of

kerosene, helicopters, gliders, large and small jets, it all comes

back to the basics exhibited in a biplane flight like the one above.

I’ve learned that wingspan, gross weight and capability of the

machine mean very little in determining whether a pilot is

Artful; only the individual decides that. It’s a thoughtful,

conscious, continuous choice—the most important one we make

as aviators. And it’s not something bestowed upon us by type

ratings, fat logbooks, what we fly or who we fly for.

There is nothing exclusive or elitist about Artful Flying.

There are no monthly meetings or down-line schemes; you

don’t have to wear saffron robes or those funny hats like Moose

Lodge members. Artful Flying is available to anyone who

becomes aware of it, wants it for their own, and is willing to

work for it.

You will note a lot more “self,” in these pages than in most

other aviation books. This is because Artful Flying requires more

engagement from us than “ordinary” flying. That’s the whole

point, actually.

The format of this book is a little different from most

aviation books you might have read; it’s largely a collection of

stories. Most of us began our lives in the arms of our parents or

loving elders listening to stories. Before ancient people knew

how to write, storytelling was a vital fiber in the community; it

was the way important lessons of an earlier time were passed

down through the generations. All the great teachers told

stories to make their points. It was—and still is—one of the best

ways we learn. In spite of our advancements in communication

with paper, books, chips, discs, tapes, videos and computers,

we still thirst for simple stories with a message. Some of the

following stories have been changed to protect the not-soinnocent;

others still have, as my buddy Gordon Baxter used to say,

“the hide, hooves and hair still on it.”

We’ll look at many pilots in the following pages to discover the

secrets of Artful Flying, paying close attention to

the essential human ingredients that create these differences.

We’ll study some of the best and worst aviators—you might

even recognize yourself in one or two of the stories. I’ll share

things I’ve learned in my years of general aviation, corporate

and airline flying—and equally important—my lifelong study

of art, music, athletics, and writing. As we study this elusive,

Artful quality in others and in ourselves, perhaps you and I

can begin to incorporate these essential ingredients into our

own cockpit.

So, welcome aboard. I’m really glad you’re here. I hope

that our collaboration in these pages will ultimately develop

higher levels of awareness in all of us, and thus, we become

safer pilots. But my highest hope is that this book will enhance

your enjoyment and appreciation of flying as an art form, and

encourage you to fly Artfully.

Now, join up on my right wing; we’re about to do some

serious fun flying toward new horizons.

Michael Maya Charles

Erie, Colorado

Spring ’05

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