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Fear of Flying

by John Benson

To get to my primary school, you had to walk along a sunken path beside the playing fields for about 300 metres. To get up to the main road, and the bus stop to go home, you then had to trudge up a long flight of broken concrete steps. I can still visualise the cracks in the rust-stained concrete filling my field of vision as I toiled each day up those stairs with a heavy bag of books slung over one shoulder after school.

That was where I first experienced the thrill of flight.

It wasn’t at all the way you would normally imagine it: small boy looking up in awe at passenger jets leaving four icy trails across a mighty blue expanse of sky. Nothing like that. It was during one of those sudden tropical storms that blow up the coast and blast Sydney into submission during the winter.

We were all looking forward to it as the final class of the day drew to a close. The bell rang and we streamed out the gates and turned for the playing fields. As we had all hoped, the path had become a river and we plunged in, kicking and splashing our way along in complete disregard for shoes, clothes and, ultimately, the head-colds we would all develop by the next day.

Exhausted and wet, we approached the steps at the far end leading up to the road. That was where it happened. I remember every moment as though it were a film in slow motion. Some of the luckier boys had umbrellas. One of them, I don’t even know his name, was a tiny Asian kid with thick dark hair springing out from his head like an echidna. His parents had given him one of those enormous golf umbrellas with corporate logos printed all over it, onto which he was holding tightly with both hands to stop it blowing away.

As he raised his leg to climb the first step, a violent gust of wind blew over our heads, catching the umbrella and lifting him in the air. Terrified, he hung on without so much as a squeak as the gust lifted him up all fifteen steps. Astonished, we all watched from below as his short legs pedalled desperately in the air. Twisting around to look at us, his eyes stared straight into mine as I stood dripping wet with the rest of the boys; a look of terror mixed with exhilaration.

And then it was over. The wind deposited him neatly at the top of the steps and time started again. We all swarmed up and clustered around him as he walked on, huddled low beneath the umbrella, and ribbed him mercilessly, envious that this miracle had happened to him and not us. Well, all except for me. Something had changed inside me. I felt this strange power running through me as I replayed the scene over and over again in my mind, remembering that look of pure terror and joy as this boy suddenly felt himself become weightless.

That was it, I was hooked. After that day, my obsession to fly, to experience that mind-spinning rush as you break free of the chains confining us to the ground, became the one great goal of my life. My room was quickly filled with posters of jet aircraft, fighter planes and moon rockets. Every weekend I would pester my parents until, wearily, they would drive me one more time out to the international airport to see the big jets lumbering in to land, or thundering along the runway before launching their hundreds of tonnes of metal and tender human cargo into the sky.

They thought that this fad would pass, like any young boy’s dream to become a policeman or fire fighter. But it didn’t. Not even when fate brought me once again face to face with the thrill flickering within a pilot’s eyes.

At fourteen years of age, my entire school was witness to what the newspapers called a “terrible accident”. I knew it was no accident. As we sat meekly in the grandstand watching the annual athletics carnival, the tail rotor of a news helicopter flying overhead failed. The stricken aircraft fell literally out of the sky into the middle of the sports field, scattering debris everywhere.

After the initial shock, the entire school poured onto the field and surrounded the mangled wreckage. We could all see that the cameraman, whose broken body was twisted in macabre directions, was dead. But the pilot, still strapped into his seat, was alive. Once again, I could feel time slowing as I stared into his dazed eyes. A grim smile formed on his bloodied face. Then the wreckage ignited and he started to scream.

For years afterwards, as I grew older, boys would glance away hurriedly if their eyes alighted on the depression in the ground left by the crash. During games of rugby, the run of play would flow magically around that spot. No-one dared cross it with the ball, and all the visiting teams complied with the unwritten law. Such was the power of the scene that was left on their fragile minds.

But not mine. I looked longingly at the spot. For me it was the site of a revelation, a confirmation. A message from the Gods of the four winds announcing my destiny, telling me to fly.

Did you know that you can legally obtain a flying license years before you can have a license to drive a ground-hugging automobile? My parents, although not wealthy, were able to save enough to get me into the air when I was only 15 years old. I think the joy on my face, the smile that refused to quit my lips for weeks afterwards, was reward enough for their scrimping and saving.

I felt as though I had finally returned to my proper element, like a dolphin returned to the sea. The joystick and pedals felt so natural to me, so smooth and logical; the instructors were amazed. They told my parents that I had no fear, to keep me away or I’d be in the cockpit of a stunt plane before I was 18. That scared my parents. They looked at the statistics and I had to play a careful game. Feigning indifference just enough so they would still let me continue with the lessons.

At 16, I was a qualified pilot with a limited license. At 17, I was certified on twin engine planes. That same year I left school and got my first professional job ferrying ruddy-faced stockmen and their wives back out to the bush with a year’s supply of city purchases. I was devastated when the rejection letter came from the air force. The psychologists were worried by what they called an ‘introspective’ nature. They couldn’t see that I was deliberately holding back! If only they knew what I was really like!

For a while, it seemed that I would never fly jets. But I slowly built up my hours, did my time on the simulators. For years, I dusted crops and acted as an aerial bus driver in slow, antiquated aircraft. The pile of rejection letters from the major airlines piled up. None of them wanted me. They preferred the young hotshots straight out of the military. With them, the government pays for most of the training.

I put my head down and kept on flying, but it wasn’t the flying that I wanted, that I needed. None of it gave me the feeling. None of it explained the look which I had seen in those eyes. Then I got the call from SilkAir.

There, that’s the story. For all you people that have been asking yourselves, “Why?”. I am recording this in the cockpit of a brand new Airbus 320. We’re at 31,000 feet and flying just below the speed of sound. Earlier in the flight, I put on my uniform and walked through the plane to say hello to the passengers, all 256 of them. They looked up at me, calm and relaxed. I don’t think there was a single one among them with a fear of flying.

After that, I came up here and relieved the co-pilot a bit early. He was happy to go; he’s got something going with one of the hostesses, if their smug looks before the flight are anything to go on. As soon as the door was closed, I locked it and reprogrammed the autopilot. In three minutes, it will put the plane into a power dive. About 5 seconds later, we’ll break the sound barrier. That won’t be a problem for the plane structurally – all modern jetliners are tested beyond the speed of sound. About the same time, we’ll begin experiencing weightlessness.

I’ll be with the passengers. After I finish this recording, I’m going to go out there and lock the anti-terrorist door behind me. I want to be with them when it starts. I want to see the look in all those eyes when I give them the greatest gift of all. Thanks to me, they’ll all die having experienced the thrill of really flying. About three minutes after that we should hit the ground. There won’t be much left at that speed. Nothing much to mark the spot in years to come, except maybe a slight hole in the ground.

I thought you’d all like to know.

Over and out.