Flight: Third Lesson
Three Little Birds/Don't Worry 'Bout a Thing (Bob Marley)
That Thursday afternoon was miserable.
I sat in my Gaithersburg office at the Institute of Standards and Technology, noting the way a dark day encouraged reflections in the window of the reprints, government forms and papers stacked on my desktop.
The phone rang.
It was Kim, my flight instructor.
“It was Craig,” I heard her voice quiver on the phone.
I waited a moment, and blinked at the silence on the other end.
It seemed I had been vaguely aware of some news about the crash of a light GA plane in northern Virginia that afternoon.
“What?”
More silence.
“The crash, it was Craig…”
* * *
The funeral for Craig Schultz, 22, a flight instructor from Middleburg, was held that weekend at Emmanuel Episcopal, 105 East Washington Street, an antebellum era brick chapel (1842) on the main street of the hamlet.
I spotted Kim’s plaid overcoat in the crowd.
The family was involved with the construction industry. The chapel and funeral home across the street were unable to accommodate the crowd of mourners.
“I flew with Craig my first ten hours”, I told her. She knew I had known him well enough to know his ambition was to set up a charter flight business in the Caribbean. Bob Marley was his hero.
The case of Marley’s CD was displayed on the top of his mahogany casket as his music reggae music played, and the line shuffled past, offering condolences.
“What happened? He was such a crack pilot…”
* * *
It took a while for the NTSB to complete their report.
No mechanical failures.
It seemed Craig had flown with a beginner flight student who had previous taken lessons on helicopter, and they had just returned from the practice area between Leesburg and Winchester just over the Blue Ridge.
They had likely returned as the weather deteriorated.
They were practicing touch-and-gos back at KJYO, landing, slowing down but not exiting the runway before powering up for another go around.
There was a newspaper picture of the wreck just off Runway 17 south of KJYO airport. In an odd way, it resembled the asymmetric whale-fish with fat lips in the corner of Renaissance ocean maps.
Bent wings. Bent prop. Right side up with the starboard door ajar.
That was a key.
If a crash is imminent, flight instructors are taught to unlatch the door immediately before crashing.
It seemed impossible.
Craig had been on top of it until the last second.
Perhaps the student’s seat was not locked in place on the seat rail.
The scenario was this: on the last take-off, the seat may have slipped aftward, causing panic in the student, enough to haul back the yoke inducing a low altitude stall.
Craig was not a large young man, maybe a hundred thirty-five. Rumor was the student was a big fellow, too big for Craig to wrestle the control yoke from his grip, and too late to recover at low attitude.
Stall…half spin…impact with terrain, as the NTSB jargon goes.
It is impossible to forget, every time reggae is heard…