We all have Wings

I glanced at the clock on the instrument panel and could see it was just over an hour to go to landing, and then I looked across the flightdeck of the Alitalia B767 at my colleague, “Are you okay for a few minutes? I’ll just pop back and check the plumbing — you have control”. He smiled and said,

“No probs Skip, I have control, the Minimum Safe Altitude is less than ten grand, so we’ll go straight down to that if we lose the cabin”.

“Roger that. I’ll bring you a cup of tea on my way back”. I checked my tie in the mirror on the back of the cockpit door and made my exit. Outside in the forward galley there was a middle aged male passenger waiting for the lavatory, I nodded, smiled and said to him,

“Hope you don’t mind if I jump the queue, or you could take some flying lessons?” He replied affably with an American accent.

“No you go right ahead Sir, I wouldn’t want to do your job” there was a pause so I enquired what line of work he was in, “W-a-y-ll, some call me a careers advisor”. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before I could trust myself to speak…

“Humph! Somebody gave me some career advice once and it was wrong, it took me ten years to work that out for myself. People should never say, ‘No you can’t’, to an enthusiastic teenager when they talk about their ambition in life — never!”

When I was 15 years old, we had a ‘Careers Master’ at our school — or perhaps more correctly one of the teaching staff whose secondary duty it was to advise the pupils on their future careers. This was at the Grammar School I was attending; a type of educational establishment that was once quite popular, but these days… not so much. I clearly remember him asking me the question,

“So McBride, what do you want to do when you leave school? Hmmm…?”

In those days all surnames were used when we were addressed by our tutors. I didn’t even need to think about it, I was quite sure what I wanted to do, I replied “I’d like to fly Sir… with the Royal Air Force”. There was a pause and then he snorted back at me.

“Don’t be ridiculous McBride, think of something else which is possible, there’s no chance of you getting into the RAF”. To say I was crushed would be an understatement — I left his office feeling numb and downhearted. Strewth!

Now what to do? Literally I couldn’t get enthusiastic about anything else; ever since primary school I had wanted to fly!

My dad had been an Adjutant on a Hawker Typhoon squadron in the Second World War and although he became a dentist after de-mob, he often talked about flying. In fact his association with aviation preceded WW2, because in the late 1930’s he was employed as a fitter on Halifax Bomber production at Rootes’ factory at Speke airport in Liverpool. Before that he had done some flying on a Tiger Moth and even went solo, but he was debarred from acceptance as military aircrew by having to wear spectacles. Whatever; by the time I was 15 years of age, his enthusiasm had caught my imagination — well that and the books on the adventures of Major James Bigglesworth — just plain ‘Biggles’ to his fans.

Although my eyesight was not an issue, according to my “Careers Master” I was not being realistic in my ambition to become an RAF pilot, so I had to think of something else. Quite honestly, there was nothing else which interested me and therefore (to a disillusioned teenager) there was not much point in school… Needless to say my academic results suffered badly as my dream went unfulfilled. In my own mind, there really was no point. It took me ten years to learn the truth, that in this life you can do anything if you have enough perseverance and drive. Inside every one of us “we all have wings”, but some of us don’t realise until it is too late — in my case, I was only just in time.

When I was accepted for Military Flying Training, I was the happiest person alive; I knew I was one of the luckiest too. My energies were totally focused on success in that field for a very long time. In every training course, which usually had a pass/fail assessment, test or exam at the end of it, I watched some of my contemporaries fall by the wayside. In many cases, I observed that it wasn’t necessarily their lack of ability which was to blame for their demise; it seemed that they just lost faith that they could do it too. I could see then, that although “we all had wings… some of us didn’t know why”. Time passes and fast forward to a happy time in my flying career when I was not only flying nice shiny airliners for a living, but in my off-duty I was also flying Air Cadets for the Royal Air Force in the wonderful De Havilland Chipmunk. Each cadet got around 25 minutes airborne which included aerobatics if they wished and most of them were mad keen to experience the full package. We could get 5 consecutive flights on a full tank of gas.

Due to the operational requirements of the Chipmunk, we carried out ‘running changes’ — in other words, we kept the engine running while we swapped over the cadets in the backseat. Once strapped in and the canopy closed up again, it was possible to speak to them on the intercom and the first thing we established was their name — we never normally got to see or speak to them face to face as the tandem seating and intensive programme prevented this.

“Good morning, welcome to the Air Experience Flight, what’s your name?” I said nice and clearly on the intercom — the throat mike sometimes distorted speech and it was worth making the effort to be well understood.

“Tiberius Sir!” came his reply much to my surprise, so I said,

“Err…say again chap, I didn’t quite catch your name…” I was much more used to hearing Bill, George or Harry.

“Yes it is… TIBERIUS Sir, after the famous Roman General and thank you for taking me flying today Sir”. Well, you learn something new every day.

“You are very welcome Tiberius and I hope you enjoy the flight, I guess your Mum and Dad are teachers then are they?” As we taxied out for the runway, I was simultaneously running through the pre-takeoff checks.

“My father is a Professor in history Sir and my mother is also a history teacher”. Now that explained everything, after all who else would saddle their son with such a cross to bear in life. I smiled and looked up — the weather was picture perfect with blue skies and a few fluffy clouds. I called on the intercom, “Are you all secure in the back Tiberius?” and with an affirmative response, I pushed the throttle to full power and we started to roll. Rudder to maintain straight as the revs increased and then more rudder as the tail came up and before you knew it we were airborne. Airspeed increasing rapidly now, Tiberius must be fairly lightweight, I thought to myself and we were down to just one hour’s fuel in the tanks anyway. “We all have wings…”

The next 25 minutes of our lives passed far too quickly as we soared, dived, rolled, climbed and looped our way round the sky. Tiberius had done quite a bit of glider flying and it seemed like he was a natural on the stick. By the time we started our last dive towards the airfield close to maximum speed for the run-in and break to land he was laughing his head off and so was I. Our feeling of euphoria in the cockpit of that little ‘plane was intense and if somebody had said; “we could live, for a thousand years” we would have believed them absolutely and totally. In all my time flying the Air Cadets in AEF flights, there were a few truly notable missions and this one was right up there.

Now we were taxiing back in again, high on adrenalin and both of us glowing from the magic of flight, REAL flight. I asked him about his ambition to fly and he told me that he had received ‘some negative feedback from his Careers Adviser’ — I could feel my blood pressure rising… Grrrr!…never say “NO you can’t” to an enthusiastic teenager…Never! I spent the next two minutes explaining to him that if he really wanted to do something (anything) in life, it was possible if he wanted it badly enough. Nothing could stop him and he “should not listen to the bad advice of a Careers Master”, he interrupted me,

“Actually Sir it’s a computer. We put in all the data and the Careers advice comes out as a printout…” I was aghast. A computer programme? Was that all our young people are worth now, not even a human mentor to advise them?

“Listen to me Tiberius”, we were coming to the parking position in dispersal and our time was very short, “…when the computer gives you its decision, next time, just enter the letters B-O-L-O-X many times over until it crashes, do you understand me? Good luck my friend… YOU can do it! YOU CAN FLY!” The canopy was open now, propeller at idle and another cadet waiting. The sergeant was on the wing and pulled the intercom lead for the back-seater, another customer joined me and plugged in, I set 1100rpm again before the engine oiled up. I cleared my throat, for some reason there was a lump in it and then I took a deep breath…

“Ahem… Good Morning! Welcome to the Air Experience Flight, what’s your name?”

— 0 —

The lyrics of the song ‘Never Tear Us Apart’ by INXS have a special resonance for me. They go like this:

“We could live for a thousand years, but if I hurt you, I’d make wine from your tears. I told you, that we could fly, ’cause we all have wings, but some of us don’t know why”.

© James McBride

See below… the end of an era.