SURPRISE YOURSELF

I remember flow states, during times of stress in the airplane, when time slows down just a bit—enough to help me manage a given situation deliberately and appropriately.

THERE IS NO FLOW TODAY.

Flashing back to two days ago, I recall a comment that has lodged in my mind, and I work hard to apply those words to the situation at hand: “It’s just a position in the sky that you have to deal with.”

So says Mike Burke, instructor for Prevailance Aerospace in Chesapeake, Virginia, as we’re finishing up the first ground session of a three-day upset-prevention-and-recovery training course that I’ve signed on to; UPRT trains pilots to recognize and recover from unusual attitudes and aircraft upsets. We would be preparing to head out to the airplane to start into it, except for the scuds of what was once Hurricane Isaias trudging across the airport.

The syllabus calls for three instructional sessions, each followed by an hourlong flight in one of the school’s Extras—a 330 or 330LX. Fortunately, I’m in a class of one, and the training is designed to flex for just such occasions because the UPRT flights need