By Kristy Gilligan 

Ever since I started flying I have defended Aviation to my non-flying friends, repeating mantras like, ‘you are more likely to be hit by a car crossing the road than hurt in an aircraft’ and the good old, ‘flying isn’t as hard as you think’. If I have to repeat these to one more person I may as well just have a banner made and fly down the main street at 50ft. Of course, my dare-devil banner antics would just serve to provoke the non-flyers further.

I first got in an aircraft when I was 16. To be precise it was on July 30th, 1994 at RAAF Base East Sale, Victoria, in a Blanik glider. The whole thing lasted eight minutes. Just over three hours aeronautical experience later I flew solo for the first time and it can’t have cost my parents more than a few hundred dollars. From that very moment my school mates were envious of the glamourous life I was leading on the weekends. I guess they pictured me throwing on my leather flying jacket, goggles and scarf, sauntering across the tarmac and firing up the turbine for an overnighter in the Bahamas? The reality was that I was ankle deep in wet grass at 6am, pushing a glider and organising cables for hours on end in order to be rewarded with my eight minutes of flying for the day. It was in these early days that I learned the defensive strategies required to justify my passtime to the general population.

Several years later I took to powered flying in order to prep myself for an application to the Royal Australian Navy as a pilot. Here too the day to day routine consisted of pushing aircraft, refuelling and many, many hours of polishing Perspex between lessons. Still, the public opinion of my hobby and future career was frequently that it was glamourous, dangerous and expensive. Glamour went out the window early on with a change to comfy flat-soled shoes and a baseball cap. Danger was trying to keep my stomach contents down after a big weekend at military flight screening followed by an aerobatic sortie and expense is something we all endure in aviation but no more than, say, a motorcycle enthusiast.

About the same time I started flying I also started riding motorcycles; all part of my grand scheme to see my parents have a nervous breakdown before I turned twenty. My first real bike was a Suzuki GSXR600 road bike. It was shiny, fast and very cool and I loved it. Along with the bike, at my father’s persistence, came the best helmet, leather jacket, boots and gloves money could buy, plus a gigantic insurance policy. While my private pilot license cost in the vicinity of $10,000, all said and done, the motorcycle set me back at least $18,000 by the time I had all the gear and the $3000 a year insurance policy! After two years, several crashes and multiple, ‘I told you so’s’ from my folks, the bike was traded in and gave me back less than half of what I had invested in it. Learning to fly might seem like a lot of money down the drain but it has gifted me a life long skill, a career, a stronger confidence in myself and an array of magnificent friends. Not to mention my ongoing safety.

Don’t think for a minute that I don’t like motorcycles. Given half a chance, and not being nine months pregnant, I would get on one tomorrow. I only use the old bike to draw a comparison between the relative safety of flying an aircraft and some of the other hobbies on hand. After many years on a bike I had a shoulder dislocation, burns, scratches and too many bruises to mention. An accident with a kick starter left me with a shin bruise that took a year to fade. As for aircraft, the injuries are trivial. I may have pulled some muscles trying to push them out of the hangar, had the odd bump on the head while doing a fuel drain under a Piper Arrow’s wing and once or twice scared myself enough to raise my heart beat beyond recommended operating limits. All I can say is that if you fly a single seat glider, always make sure the seat is locked in the rails properly before attempting a launch.

Safety in aviation has been a big issue on the news lately. There are many thousands of stories similar to mine, with advocates for aviation chanting their mantras across the country and yet the myths of aviation still prevail in the media. I do detest the media for how they report on aviation events. It seems the only way aviation can get a positive spin is for someone to do something outrageous, crazy or record breaking like fly around the world upside down. That’s all fine and newsworthy but it’s hypocritical to get so excited over someone’s risk taking in an aeroplane, then a week later run a story on air crashes and safety concerns. If they reported on car accidents with the same efficiency, the evening news would take approximately 23 hours every night of the year, leaving very little time for those annoying Harvey Norman ads. That’s what aviation needs – some positive advertising.

Having worked in the media for many years I know that the best advertising is word of mouth and the best recruiting of new pilots comes from family and friends. In my personal experience, those exposed to aviation long term are more likely to accept it as normal and want to pursue it as a hobby. I grew up in an Air Force family and so spent a lot of time around aircraft, even if no one in the family flew. I’m proud to say I was the first, but I was promptly followed by my mother, father and brother. These days Mum and Dad have left me far behind, I put that down to the fact that they stopped spending Avgas money on me and started spending it on themselves: I will forgive them some day. The point is if we want to see aviation grow, maybe we should be looking closer to home. We should all make it our personal mission to regularly offer a flight or a visit to the aerodrome to someone we know who hasn’t been before. Before you know it we will be cost sharing more flights, buying new aeroplanes and all having a jolly good time.

On my local airfield there are pilots between 16 years old and way too old to mention. There are ex airline pilots, engineers, avionics specialists and LAMES who fly. There are also the lucky few who are there because they can afford it – namely chiropractors, doctors, business owners and military officers. Then there are the ones that are starting out as I did and spending every moment they aren’t working their regular jobs to spend every penny they earn on learning to fly. I still can’t work out the dynamics of this correlation. Most of these people rarely mingle. There is no aero club. There is no social club. It’s like global warming. No one can see it happening; it feels the same; our individual lives haven’t changed, yet we can see in the big picture that something isn’t right.

My folks recently made the pilgrimage to the grand old USA for Osh Kosh, the Holy Grail of general and recreational aviation events. What blew them away was not what they found at Osh Kosh but at the other small fields they saw during their stay. In the very country that triggered changes in global aviation safety through the events of 9/11, there are no big fences around small airports, no ID cards and no warning signs. I am told you can simply park on the side of the road in some places and walk right up to the aircraft parked not more than a few metres from the road side. Clearly Americans have an unspoken understanding that walking in front of an aircraft is dangerous and not nearly as dangerous as trying to steal one. I guess Americans must invite more of their non-flying friends to the airfield too.

If my life is resigned to chanting the praises of aviation in clichéd phrases to the mislead public, then I shall graciously accept my lot in life as payment for the wonderful experiences that aviation has given me. I hold higher hopes for my children, the first of whom is due any day now. Perhaps he or she will be able to visit a friendly aero club, own a cost effective little aircraft and take it flying on weekends and never, ever have to explain to a stranger that wings do not randomly fall off of aircraft and that they are more likely to fall off a motorcycle than be harmed while flying.