Life Lessons from 5,000 Feet
I recently had the pleasure of being the feature of a Human Interest Piece in the NEFA Newsline! I thought I would share the tale with you here…
“November one four three tango x-ray you are cleared for an immediate VFR departure Southeast Bound.” With that clearance, a lifelong dream became a reality as I pushed the throttle forward and accelerated skyward. My name is Michael Dean O’Connor, I am Vice President of Marketing at Collateral Specialists, and more recently I am a pilot. I grew up in a small town, loving the outdoors in the mountains of California. I always had a hunger for adventure and dreamt of flying to faraway places. People would always tell me, “that’s a nice dream,” but I was determined to make it a reality. Harvey MacKay put it perfectly, “A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline.” For me, becoming a pilot was my dream, so in January of 2016 I set the goal that in 3 months I would have my private pilot’s license.
The gears began to turn, I mapped out what it would take to get my license. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires 40 Hours of Flight Instruction, passing a medical examination, and the passing of a ground school examination. It would cost around $10,000 to complete the training with the exam fees and materials. There it was, I knew I would have to work hard to prepare for a condensed flight school schedule, and to come up with a way to finance the whole process.
The next thing I knew I was standing at the door of my flight academy. My instructor walked me through a pre-flight check, explained how everything worked, and had me go through the motions of conducting the check myself. He grabbed his headset and said, “Let’s go flying.” My head exploded. Literally one hour after showing up for flight school we were going flying! I mean, I thought there were some formalities we needed to take care of first. Do you not buy me lunch before you take me on my first flight? After my momentary freak out I climbed into the plane and the adventure began.
The first part of the lesson was taxiing and take-off. The plane I was in used brakes to steer while you were on the ground. It’s less than ideal, but it was a simple system that gets the job done. I was all over the taxiway, if I was drawing the centerline it would have looked like a toddler’s scribbles. The process of learning to taxi is a lot like learning new tasks, SOP’s, and software programs at work. It’s all over the place to begin with, but then after some time, it becomes second nature. Now we’re sitting at the end of the runway after Mr. Michael’s Wild Ride down the taxiway, the heart is really pumping. We lineup, make sure the plane is configured for takeoff and push the throttle forward. Just like working in the office, making sure you have the right tools and systems in place ensures that as time starts to fly, your business will soar too.
As you begin to accelerate down the runway, you no longer use the wheels to steer, the increasing airflow over the body of the airframe allows you to use the rudder on the tail to steer. Well, the first time you’re learning to use the rudder to maintain centerline isn’t always the prettiest, but you learn quickly. Before you know it you’re at V1, rotate speed, which gives you a second to make the go, no go decision. There are so many times sitting at my desk I get this same rush after building an email marketing campaign. When you’re about to send that baby flying out to your best leasing customers. I ask myself, go or no go, and my heart goes racing until I finally get the gall to let go of the mouse click. Just as those emails go flying, the plane leaps towards the sky at V2, positive rate of climb, and you’re flying.
Once airborne there were so many things to learn. There was fast flight, slow flight, road tracking, turns around a point, power-on stalls, power-off stalls, shallow banked turns, steep banked turns, and cross country flight. Flying a plane can be a lot like working in the equipment finance industry. We’d all love a nice smooth flight. There are times when there’s a nice gradual climb, other times when the engine cuts and the whole thing seems to stall and free-fall. What I learned though, just like in business, is that you are in command of your destiny, until your plane reaches the ground, and by any means necessary get to the ground safely. However, that’s not to scare you, when you’re soaring a few thousand feet above the ground, traveling fast, the world looks amazing. There is one thing that does happen at the end of most flights, and that’s the hardest thing of them all. Landing.
The one thing most people remember about a pilot is how they land the plane. They can navigate you somewhere, deviate around weather, taxi quickly to get ahead of other aircraft on the ground, but you won’t remember those things, you’ll base their rating on how well they greased the runway. There are so many different variables to consider: is there a crosswind, how fast is that crosswind, how heavy are you, what is the landing surface made of, the list is endless. As you glide gently down towards the ground the plane begins to tell you it doesn’t want to land, by what is known to pilots as ground effect. One of my first landings I came in so hot and fast the ground effect floated my plane half a mile down the runway before we even touched a wheel. It’s like that one last minute deal that comes in hot and fast right before a holiday weekend, that floats down your day and touches down right before you head out of the office.
As I reflect back on my adventure of becoming a pilot, I can identify many parallels between decisions made on the flight deck and decisions made in the office. For me, it was about setting a deadline on my dreams, drawing a plan, and making it a goal. I am sure we all have that one thing we’ve been dreaming about for so long. My encouragement, set a deadline, make a plan, and it’ll become a goal for you as well. An anonymous author coined the quest for flight perfectly, “A mile of road will take you exactly one mile. A mile of runway will take you anywhere.”
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