Flying issues with the other half..

eman1200 said:
I would say that was the bare minimum amount of sarcasm.
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I know you can do better than that! (And it was three hours, not 63 minutes)

Give her credit, she’s flown from Atlanta to Connecticut in a Tiger with me. And......Not to mention that she flew to The Kentucky Dam Fly-in in a 172 and got there a full day before the host! :)
 
Dave Theisen said:
I know you can do better than that! (And it was three hours, not 63 minutes)

Give her credit, she’s flown from Atlanta to Connecticut in a Tiger with me. And......Not to mention that she flew to The Kentucky Dam Fly-in in a 172 and got there a full day before the host! :)
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dayum. all that with no sarcasm. well done my friend, well done!
 
ScottinIowa said:
She's loves commercial flights.. We plan on taking a lot of weekend trips here and there to discover new places. It would be very unfortunate if I can't break her of this. I think she has a little motion sensitivity as well. I told her she'll get used to it, but she's all freaked out about it now.
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The fact that you say she's open to going up with an instructor makes me wonder if you are a new pilot, and if that is what's making her nervous.

Not flying, but I have been sailing with a couple. I met the husband sailing on another boat and he wondered if the three of us (him, his wife, and me) could go sailing together. He said his wife has taken the basic keelboat class, but still gets nervous, and maybe having another woman aboard would help. I'm always skeptical of this, because I never had those kinds of feelings, not only that, I'm just as much of a novice as the husband. But I went along with it. Turns out that after three or four times, the wife is enjoying it. She participated in tacking and other crew duties, and she has gotten confident enough to take the helm when it's not too windy or rough. She told me today that she likes the way I explain things in a calmer fashion than her husband. I think he's pretty calm, but he does sometimes get that impatient tone when trying to explain something to her... like many spouses/SOs. I think that he would like to someday be able to sail with just her as a crew, as long as she gets over her nervousness. As an aside, he's a pilot and they own a 182. She doesn't seem to have a problem going flying with him.

Anyway, my suggestion would be to give her a small job, so she feels involved. There's looking for traffic, for example, or following along on a chart.
 
TheFB said:
A solid glass of wine beforehand helps too according to her.
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"*A* solid glass of wine...? I roll out the drink cart as soon as we're airborne. I mean "as soon", like, wheels off the ground, I turn around and take the brakes off the drink cart.

It's hard to get it between our seats. Also, she doesn't get a whole can of Coke, but she does get a clear monogrammed cup that has my name on it. Also, very small napkins.

When I'm feeling really generous, I give her a warm, wet, towel to put on her face.

She was a little peeved about the size of the bag of peanuts I gave out. She wanted more, and I politely said "ma'am, if everybody asked for two, we wouldn't have enough for the people in coach." Then I wave my head towards the kids in the back, who are also scowling. No extra pretzels for them either. They turn down my offer to purchase headphones for five dollars.
 
FormerHangie said:
That's a lot of sarcasm for one post.
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eman1200 said:
I would say that was the bare minimum amount of sarcasm.
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Beat me to it. :)

StevieTimes said:
"*A* solid glass of wine...? I roll out the drink cart as soon as we're airborne. I mean "as soon", like, wheels off the ground, I turn around and take the brakes off the drink cart.

It's hard to get it between our seats. Also, she doesn't get a whole can of Coke, but she does get a clear monogrammed cup that has my name on it. Also, very small napkins.

When I'm feeling really generous, I give her a warm, wet, towel to put on her face.

She was a little peeved about the size of the bag of peanuts I gave out. She wanted more, and I politely said "ma'am, if everybody asked for two, we wouldn't have enough for the people in coach." Then I wave my head towards the kids in the back, who are also scowling. No extra pretzels for them either. They turn down my offer to purchase headphones for five dollars.
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Aww man I thought you were telling the truth until I saw peanuts. SWA was the last with peanuts and they killed them. You’re lying. :) :) :)

Seriously though, that was funny stuff right there. I need to start joking with passengers about headset rentals and letting them have a little sip of soda and four lbs of ice in a little flimsy cup. Maybe some bag fees, too. :)
 
denverpilot said:
I need to start joking with passengers about headset rentals and letting them have a little sip of soda and four lbs of ice in a little flimsy cup. Maybe some bag fees, too. :)
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It's all fun and games until they start asking where's the bathroom.
 
Everskyward said:
The fact that you say she's open to going up with an instructor makes me wonder if you are a new pilot, and if that is what's making her nervous.


Anyway, my suggestion would be to give her a small job, so she feels involved. There's looking for traffic, for example, or following along on a chart.
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I am a low time PP and I'm sure that's playing a part. I did offer her to help with a few things here and there, but she wanted no part of it. She just grips the door with a death grip and hangs on. In fact she was so nervous she didn't like me touching the radio or anything inside the cockpit and thought like driving a car I should be completely focused on looking outside..
 
Luigi said:
Life is too short trade her in! Keep the plane.
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Forget the trade the airplane will go , just get a female companion to fly with, of course discretion is key to keeping the plane,
 
ScottinIowa said:
I am a low time PP and I'm sure that's playing a part. I did offer her to help with a few things here and there, but she wanted no part of it. She just grips the door with a death grip and hangs on. In fact she was so nervous she didn't like me touching the radio or anything inside the cockpit and thought like driving a car I should be completely focused on looking outside..
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I was going to ask how many hours your had but being a newbie myself I didn't want to insult if you are like Chuck Yeager or something :)

You do realize you have the perfect excuse now. Tell her in a kidding voice "I'm kicking you out for a while :)" Let her know you want to build up some hours. Get some more experience. And as you do, she'll realize it when you chat about flights, etc. Then take up a a few family members, buddies, a co-worker or of course Misty, that young, eager neighbor a couple house down :) You both win. You'll get more experience. She'll see it through actions (not words). And maybe a bit of envy will move things along.

Now, here comes the hard part. If you being happy flying hinges on her flying with you then you need to admit that right now because there are other problems to solve.

Other than my wife and daughter, I made myself fly about 20hrs before I started taking up passengers. Its been a great experience and each person is different which I think is cool. I keep offering to give a ride to my wife's friend (yeow!!) but she keeps telling me she isn't interested in flying...hmmm
 
ScottinIowa said:
I am a low time PP and I'm sure that's playing a part. I did offer her to help with a few things here and there, but she wanted no part of it. She just grips the door with a death grip and hangs on. In fact she was so nervous she didn't like me touching the radio or anything inside the cockpit and thought like driving a car I should be completely focused on looking outside..
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Do you have a pilot friend that she would think is more experienced? Maybe the three of you could go flying together. Then she might not be nervous about flying with a newbie.
 
ScottinIowa said:
I am a low time PP and I'm sure that's playing a part.
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I am the wife and I can tell you that is probably all of it. She will not state this to you because she knows it's kind of an ego thing with a man if you will forgive my sexism. As a woman I don't want to hurt my man's feelings by showing any kind of doubt in his abilities. I struggled with this a lot with my husband, and I myself had taken flying lessons and wanted to be a pilot even before we ever met.

But when we met neither of us were flying. Sometime after our children were born he went back to get his PPL (like me he had taken some lessons in college but didn't finish up). He got his ticket but I was very hesitant to fly with him and even would not let him take the children up at all until he had a few hundred hours. I think it wasn't even until he got his instrument rating before I let him take the kids anywhere.

Over time I grew very confident in him because I saw how meticulous he was, how focused on safety, he demonstrated to me that he is an excellent pilot. There is no substitute for experience. Once my husband was 1000 hours I flip flopped and the reverse became true: I wouldn't let anyone BUT my husband fly my kids.

Because you say she expressed interest in taking a lesson is why I suspect her problem is your lack of experience rather than a basic fear of flying. Throw in some airsickness and there you have it. The air sickness and fear of bumpiness and such will go away fast if she takes a few lessons with a good instructor. It will also help with the issue of you being so new because if she knows the basics then she can feel like a backup pilot if things go south. I did the same, I went back for lessons, didn't get the ticket in the end because some medical issues came up, but I became competent enough to know I could get us down safely if anything happened to him.

So my advice, focus on flying and building hours. Let her see you becoming better. Keep learning, maybe go for the instrument rating as soon as you have enough hours. There is probably no better way to up your game than the IR. Fly as much as you can on your own or with buddies, but don't pressure her to go. Rather, develop yourself as a pilot.

Let her worry about dealing with her issues. Let her do it at her own pace. It sounds like there is a good chance she will come around.
 
ScottinIowa said:
She's loves commercial flights.. We plan on taking a lot of weekend trips here and there to discover new places. It would be very unfortunate if I can't break her of this. I think she has a little motion sensitivity as well. I told her she'll get used to it, but she's all freaked out about it now.
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My wife takes bonine for motion sickness.
 
My wife doesn't like flying. She does like getting places in 1/2 the time without I95 Amtrak or the TSA.
 
If you can find a Cirrus with AC for rent somewhere get checked out in that and take her. It'll be worth the investment.
 
Don’t know if anyone mentioned this yet but why don’t you try some ground work with her? Have her watch a few of @Radar Contact ‘s videos. Maybe once she sees how calm cool and collected Mrs radar contact is, she’ll relax a little bit.
 
Rushie said:
I am the wife and I can tell you that is probably all of it. She will not state this to you because she knows it's kind of an ego thing with a man if you will forgive my sexism. As a woman I don't want to hurt my man's feelings by showing any kind of doubt in his abilities. I struggled with this a lot with my husband, and I myself had taken flying lessons and wanted to be a pilot even before we ever met.

But when we met neither of us were flying. Sometime after our children were born he went back to get his PPL (like me he had taken some lessons in college but didn't finish up). He got his ticket but I was very hesitant to fly with him and even would not let him take the children up at all until he had a few hundred hours. I think it wasn't even until he got his instrument rating before I let him take the kids anywhere.

Over time I grew very confident in him because I saw how meticulous he was, how focused on safety, he demonstrated to me that he is an excellent pilot. There is no substitute for experience. Once my husband was 1000 hours I flip flopped and the reverse became true: I wouldn't let anyone BUT my husband fly my kids.

Because you say she expressed interest in taking a lesson is why I suspect her problem is your lack of experience rather than a basic fear of flying. Throw in some airsickness and there you have it. The air sickness and fear of bumpiness and such will go away fast if she takes a few lessons with a good instructor. It will also help with the issue of you being so new because if she knows the basics then she can feel like a backup pilot if things go south. I did the same, I went back for lessons, didn't get the ticket in the end because some medical issues came up, but I became competent enough to know I could get us down safely if anything happened to him.

So my advice, focus on flying and building hours. Let her see you becoming better. Keep learning, maybe go for the instrument rating as soon as you have enough hours. There is probably no better way to up your game than the IR. Fly as much as you can on your own or with buddies, but don't pressure her to go. Rather, develop yourself as a pilot.

Let her worry about dealing with her issues. Let her do it at her own pace. It sounds like there is a good chance she will come around.
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Excellent post. Thank you for sharing from a woman's perspective.
 
Rushie said:
I am the wife and I can tell you that is probably all of it. She will not state this to you because she knows it's kind of an ego thing with a man if you will forgive my sexism. As a woman I don't want to hurt my man's feelings by showing any kind of doubt in his abilities. I struggled with this a lot with my husband, and I myself had taken flying lessons and wanted to be a pilot even before we ever met.

But when we met neither of us were flying. Sometime after our children were born he went back to get his PPL (like me he had taken some lessons in college but didn't finish up). He got his ticket but I was very hesitant to fly with him and even would not let him take the children up at all until he had a few hundred hours. I think it wasn't even until he got his instrument rating before I let him take the kids anywhere.

Over time I grew very confident in him because I saw how meticulous he was, how focused on safety, he demonstrated to me that he is an excellent pilot. There is no substitute for experience. Once my husband was 1000 hours I flip flopped and the reverse became true: I wouldn't let anyone BUT my husband fly my kids.

Because you say she expressed interest in taking a lesson is why I suspect her problem is your lack of experience rather than a basic fear of flying. Throw in some airsickness and there you have it. The air sickness and fear of bumpiness and such will go away fast if she takes a few lessons with a good instructor. It will also help with the issue of you being so new because if she knows the basics then she can feel like a backup pilot if things go south. I did the same, I went back for lessons, didn't get the ticket in the end because some medical issues came up, but I became competent enough to know I could get us down safely if anything happened to him.

So my advice, focus on flying and building hours. Let her see you becoming better. Keep learning, maybe go for the instrument rating as soon as you have enough hours. There is probably no better way to up your game than the IR. Fly as much as you can on your own or with buddies, but don't pressure her to go. Rather, develop yourself as a pilot.

Let her worry about dealing with her issues. Let her do it at her own pace. It sounds like there is a good chance she will come around.
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No forgiveness needed. Speaking as a guy, we are ego machines. Never apologize for stating a simple truth!
 
weilke said:
If you can find a Cirrus with AC for rent somewhere get checked out in that and take her. It'll be worth the investment.
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As much as I would love AC in the plane...I have a hunch throwing down 2x or 3x the rental price or $500K+ for a plane to solve this problem is a bit extreme.
 
Sinistar said:
As much as I would love AC in the plane...I have a hunch throwing down 2x or 3x the rental price or $500K+ for a plane to solve this problem is a bit extreme.
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Definitely not fitting into my budget..
 
You can go the cheap route if its some fresh air being needed. When I have passengers I bring a small handheld fan with rechargeable batteries. It lasts like 2hrs. My daughter and my first CFI gave it high marks :)
 
Sinistar said:
You can go the cheap route if its some fresh air being needed. When I have passengers I bring a small handheld fan with rechargeable batteries. It lasts like 2hrs. My daughter and my first CFI gave it high marks :)
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What about the ice chest "air conditioners" that Sporty's sells?
 
There’s another aspect to this. Our society is currently innundated with messages that males are idiots. Fiction, TV, whatever... you name it.

You could be Bob Hoover himself and half of the society would think you are a moron.

Only the ladies come up with the ah-ha moments on Sitcoms after the dude does his weekly schtick of causing some soap opera drama through his being an idiot.

And yeah, I’ll say it... a whole lot of women believe that garbage even if subconsciously. They can live with a guy for 20 years and know he’s NEVER shown any behavior that would indicate he’s not smart, careful, and intelligent, ever... and they’d still not trust him for 200 hours of flight after earning the rating.

They earned the rating. FAA evaluated and said they’re qualified to be Pilot In Command. And that’s it.

Same goes for idiot males who think females are lesser pilots.

Unless there’s behavior observed showing a missing major piece of aviation knowledge or a careless/reckless attitude, or similar... the whole “males operate from ego” thing is complete trash psychology pushed by our society these days.

Utter garbage.

Applies to perhaps, dating... but not things most males work their butts off to accomplish and are evaluated and tested on. Same thing with the ladies.

If you have a certificate, it says something about what you did and what work you put in. Instructors know people are rightly proud of those accomplishments and telling someone they’re dangerous after they’ve earned one, is a really bad call. You can’t say that without flying with them and finding out.

So... all of that to say this: Don’t perpetuate this myth that all newly certificated pilots are dangerous to fly with. It just doesn’t hold water. They might be way in over their heads with a major unforecast weather change or an aircraft system problem, but their training they accomplished, for the most part, will handle that.

Only a small percentage of pilots I’ve run into have let their ego get in the way of good ADM. it’s just not even a “thing” and if you do see it, you see it happening long before they reach the aircraft door.
 
denverpilot said:
There’s another aspect to this. Our society is currently innundated with messages that males are idiots. Fiction, TV, whatever... you name it.

You could be Bob Hoover himself and half of the society would think you are a moron.

Only the ladies come up with the ah-ha moments on Sitcoms after the dude does his weekly schtick of causing some soap opera drama through his being an idiot.

And yeah, I’ll say it... a whole lot of women believe that garbage even if subconsciously. They can live with a guy for 20 years and know he’s NEVER shown any behavior that would indicate he’s not smart, careful, and intelligent, ever... and they’d still not trust him for 200 hours of flight after earning the rating.

They earned the rating. FAA evaluated and said they’re qualified to be Pilot In Command. And that’s it.

Same goes for idiot males who think females are lesser pilots.

Unless there’s behavior observed showing a missing major piece of aviation knowledge or a careless/reckless attitude, or similar... the whole “males operate from ego” thing is complete trash psychology pushed by our society these days.

Utter garbage.
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Planes are going down what seems on a weekly basis with people that were FAA evaluated and qualified to be PIC.
 
ScottinIowa said:
Planes are going down what seems on a weekly basis with people that were FAA evaluated and qualified to be PIC.
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And have been for decades. The current rate is well below the rate of the 70s.

It’s the same problem as seen in other “news”. You never heard about it for months three decades ago. There wasn’t any online aggregator website to go to where you could see lists of accidents from everywhere.

People are all constantly freaked out about “safety” in all sorts of aspects of their lives today because they can get stories of everyone who fell down in their bathtubs and died (a very high statistically significant way to leave the planet, according to the CDC, way above a whole bunch of other “scary” things, actually) and it freaks them out.

I have this conversation with my mother regularly.

“But it has to be worse! I hear more stories of this happening now!”

No mom. It’s called the Internet. And you’re basing your fear off of a time when that story would be on page 27 of the local newspaper only IF it happened within a 500 mile radius of your home. You might hear about it also if a celebrity had it happen beyond the geographic boundaries of the newspaper coverage.

She’s quite convinced companies, politicians, all sorts of things are orders of magnitude worse than 40-50 years ago because she now HEARS about them doing the things they’ve always done.

Same thing with airplane crashes. When I started flying there wasn’t any place like PoA where everyone posted every crash or incident. That flood of information, humans still haven’t developed proper analysis skills for yet.

Mom’s generation less than mine. My little sister can mostly ignore damn near any drivel she reads online. Next generation after us? They’ll be used to the constant noise and information automatically fed to them by the code that knows “they like airplanes, lets feed them every airplane crash story since it has the keyword ‘airplane’ associated with it!”, and not even worried about it.

(Keywords are so 1999. I know. It’s AI doing the pattern matching these days. That’s just too much detail for explaining the concept of information overload and how it affects risk analysis for the average person.)

Look at it a bit. You’ll see it. The best way to see it is to watch both of the major political cults use it to manipulate people. More bad news about some politician means they’re a bad person. Just throw as much garbage on the Net as possible and a large percentage of people will believe it.

(Conversely try to tell them politicians have always acted like that, and they literally won’t believe it. But but but we never heard about that in the sixties! Just peer at them over your glasses and wait and see if the light bulb goes on, once you get them to that point. Hahaha.)

Talking to older folks about current events right now in the solid beginnings of the world where their computer literally feeds them more of anything they click on, is amazing. They think the end of the world is here. And they have a lot of time to click on stuff if they’re retired and not working. It’s almost comical if they weren’t so freaked out about it.

“But the computer says...”

Yeah, and the computer would feed you six hundred articles on how to make chocolate cupcakes if that’s what you clicked on, but one headline grabbed your attention and now it’s feeding you 600 of the same headline style articles from a thousand “online journalists”.

Aviation isn’t immune from this effect. If anything we all amplify it. Which is fine as far as it goes, but you have to weigh it against the actual historical accident numbers.
 
ScottinIowa said:
All great advice, and I thank you guys for that. She gave me permission to book a disco flight for her, so it's set up for Thursday morning. Hopefully it helps!
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Now that is a novel approach.... a DISCO flight. Is she a child of the 70’s?
 
eman1200 said:
Don’t know if anyone mentioned this yet but why don’t you try some ground work with her? Have her watch a few of @Radar Contact ‘s videos. Maybe once she sees how calm cool and collected Mrs radar contact is, she’ll relax a little bit.
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Ummm, might not want to have her watch that last one when the door pops open. ;)
 
ScottinIowa said:
I'd love to hear some reviews from people that have tried these.
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I built my own since I didn't want to spend $400 for theirs. Mine is a fan blowing air inside a cooler around 7 of those blue artificial ice plates arranged like a radiator so there is no liquid inside the cooler. There is a 4" PVC tube exiting the cooler aimed right at the back of my head. In Arizona I can only tell you that it takes the edge off. It doesn't completely cool the cabin but it makes it bearable with the door and storm window closed. It lasts about three hours. After I get to altitude I shut it off and restart it when I start descending. You've heard that Arizona "is a dry heat" and that's true and the cooler works really well, except for July through September which is the monsoon season and it can get humid and it isn't as effective.

Maybe someone will chime in with their experience with the more expensive one.
 
eman1200 said:
Don’t know if anyone mentioned this yet but why don’t you try some ground work with her? Have her watch a few of @Radar Contact ‘s videos. Maybe once she sees how calm cool and collected Mrs radar contact is, she’ll relax a little bit.
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Have watched most of Kevin's videos. She's seen a few too, but she also knows Kevin's wife works in aviation, so not quite the same situation.
 
@ScottinIowa - would you mind sharing a bit more about your pilot experience: ratings? hours? Previous passengers? Aircraft types? How much flying since your checkride, etc?

I'm not sure if @Rushie is onto something or not. I did like her post though! As Nate said, getting signed off requires a lot of effort and being sure you are good at this stuff. As long as you are not confrontational in any way you can just ask her about it vs dancing all around it. I can see a wife being incredibly overly protective of her kids? Do you guys have young kids? Also, is she 100% fine (no worrying or drama) if you go fly by yourself? If so then she's probably not worried about your flying skills.

The fact she's open to a discovery flight...could....indicate she doesn't trust your flying skills. But it could also mean she's trying anything she can to force it to work...for you!
 
saracelica said:
How about get her a discovery flight or pinch hitter course? Understanding what my husband was doing helped me. If course I went on to get my instrument rating....
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My wife used to get real nervous flying with me, sometimes so bad she used to describe her legs as like jelly ! she really wanted to be part of the hobby but struggled with the fear side of it.
I enrolled her on a pinch hitter course with a girl CFI, it worked a treat, now she enjoys flying as much as I do (well amost unless it's too bumpy !) she now actively handles frequency changes, navigation waypoints,takes any photographs along the way and feels part of what we are doing.
 
If you guys haven’t noticed, girlfriends are much better than wives. You just had to screw up a good relationship by getting married.
 
Sinistar said:
@ScottinIowa - would you mind sharing a bit more about your pilot experience: ratings? hours? Previous passengers? Aircraft types? How much flying since your checkride, etc?

I'm not sure if @Rushie is onto something or not. I did like her post though! As Nate said, getting signed off requires a lot of effort and being sure you are good at this stuff. As long as you are not confrontational in any way you can just ask her about it vs dancing all around it. I can see a wife being incredibly overly protective of her kids? Do you guys have young kids? Also, is she 100% fine (no worrying or drama) if you go fly by yourself? If so then she's probably not worried about your flying skills.

The fact she's open to a discovery flight...could....indicate she doesn't trust your flying skills. But it could also mean she's trying anything she can to force it to work...for you!
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I'm a low time PP. I passed my ride 6 weeks or so ago. I know it's a combo of my inexperience and her getting a bit motion sick when she's up. One of the times when I dropped her off and I had my niece with me. She's in high school and she enjoyed it. I don't think she's worried about me flying with anyone else as far as hurting someone at all, she's just not used to the whole process. She's going up with my CFI this Friday, so hopefully that will help.
 
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