The cross country navigation exercise is required to complete the JAR private pilot’s licence. It is effectively the first time the pilot is left alone with the plane, dependent on the new skills learned over the past few weeks. It is now not simply a case of handling the plane but also juggling the full navigation and radio without someone to take over if it becomes hectic. This is a flight that I think every pilot remembers, regardless of how long ago it was.

Part One: Granada
Part Two: Almería

At Axarquía we made blind radio calls. There was no one officially manning the radio on the ground so the pilots using the airfield simply talked to each other. You can speak either in Spanish or English on the radio in Spain. That works fine when there is an air traffic controller speaking to the pilots and keeping everyone up-to-date but in a tiny airfield like Axarquía it could be somewhat confusing. I made a point of doing my calls in English, keeping to the specific set phrases we had learned, so any Spaniard who had studied English Radiotelephony (rather than English as a language) would have no problems understanding me.

I do speak Spanish, in a conversational sense. I speak enough to get by as long as I don’t drink too much red wine and I avoid deep philosophical conversations. But I am very reliant on context and body language. I knew I was prone to guessing words, filling in the blanks when then Spaniards began speaking quickly. So I did not admit to understanding Spanish when I was on the radio, trying to lessen the chance of a misunderstanding – or at least, to ensure that if there was one, it wasn’t my fault.

On this last leg of my solo cross country, I left Almería and followed the coast. I turned inland at Torre del Mar and called on the Axarquía frequency to say that I was inbound to the airfield. I didn’t expect a response. The afternoon wind always came in from the mountains, which meant it would be blowing straight down the runway towards me. I didn’t even have to do a circuit, I could fly straight in and land.

I was surprised to hear Mercedes, the woman from the office, make a call in rapid Spanish. She knew who I was – if her call were meant for me, she would speak more slowly, or even find someone to translate and pass me the message. I hadn’t heard anyone else in the air so she was likely to be speaking to someone on the ground. That fit with the few key words I’d understood: something about people on the left of the runway. I felt sorry for them, I had a tendency to land slightly to the left which would be loud and possibly nerve-wracking for whoever was on the grass. I didn’t give it any further thought as I started my downwind checks.

I set up the plane for my final approach and looked out to see who was on the field. It was Juan, mowing the grass alongside the runway. His granddaughter and the airfield guard dog were bounding in circles around him. They were far to the left and not in my way. I reduced power and continued my descent.

I was about 200 feet above the ground, just passing the threshold, when the dog – this dog who had spent his entire life on the airfield – inexplicably panicked at the sound of my engine. I was focused on the runway, willing myself to get the flare right and finish this expedition with a perfectly smooth landing. Oliver would be proud of me.

At that moment I saw … I’m not sure I knew what I saw, something brown and black cross my field of vision. The dog, I thought. The goddamn dog just cut across the runway right in front of me. I can’t believe it just ran into the runway.

That’s when I saw the girl chasing after it.

There was no time to breath, no time even to think. I put on full power and pushed the nose up up up, anything to get away from the runway suddenly filled with child.

I went straight into the circuit, turned onto crosswind and levelled out without conscious effort. I felt almost dizzy with adrenaline. My heart was still pounding with fear.

I turned parallel to the runway and made another radio call, downwind. No response. I could see the girl running across the apron, still chasing the dog, her grandfather trying to keep up with her. I completed the circuit and came in to land, still shaking.

Oliver and Cliff came running to the plane as I taxied to the parking spot. “Jesus,” Oliver said and then, belatedly, “well done.”

“I had visions of blood on the windshield.”

“We were up in the disused tower, I was screaming GO AROUND, GO AROUND”

“I couldn’t hear you,” I said. I was trembling.

“You did fine.” He hugged me. “You did it! You’ve done your cross country solo.” He turned back to Cliff. “She’s unbelievable. She just ran, right across the runway. Right in front of the plane! I’ve never seen anything like that.” Then he remembered me again. “You did it! You were great.”

“I did it. And now I want a beer.”

I sat in the dark gloom of the bar, watching the Andalucían men crowded around the ancient oak table, watching the news. Oliver chattered excitedly about the runway incursion, repeating again he’d never seen such a thing in all his years at small airfields. I sat at one of the low tables and sipped my beer. Juan sat in the darkness behind the bar with a small glass of brandy. The grass, he told me, could wait. I could see the little girl, playing with her dolls in the gravel of the parking lot. She was laughing. She had no idea.

One of the men tipped his head at me. “Pilota,” he said with a wink. I smiled back. Today, I had conquered my fears. I was flying.

The cross country navigation exercise is required to complete the JAR private pilot’s licence. It is effectively the first time the pilot is left alone with the plane, dependent on the new skills learned over the past few weeks. It is now not simply a case of handling the plane but also juggling the full navigation and radio without someone to take over if it becomes hectic. This is a flight that I think every pilot remembers, regardless of how long ago it was.

I learned to fly in Spain with English instructors from a flying school at Oxford. My first leg was Axarquia to Granada where I was fine in the air but then panicked at dealing with the people on the ground. I survived and made my way back to the plane for the next leg of my flight, from Granada to Almería.

The sun was shining and, although the horizon wasn’t as clear as I might have liked, I didn’t have to do any difficult manoeuvres. I’d survived Granada, now I just needed to fly back to the coast and then east to Almería. It was a quiet journey and no one seemed to want to speak to me at all. I was humming to myself by the time I called Almería to tell them I had them in sight. There was no one in the local area but me. The runway was huge: 3,200 metres. It was the biggest runway I’d ever seen from the left-hand seat and I had it all to myself.

I landed without incident and parked in the corner before realising that I was going to have to trek across the hot apron to find someone to speak to. Eventually I found a tired looking building with a black C on a yellow background over the doorway, the international symbol for “Pilots, come here first.”

A red-faced Spaniard sat a grey desk, grimacing at paperwork. A younger, short-haired man stood to the side of the desk, arms crossed against his skinny chest as if in self-defence. They both glanced up as I walked in.

“Buenos días,” I said with a bright smile and explained that I was here to pay my landing fees.

The unhappy official looked at me for a long tired moment. He said “I need to speak to the pilot,” in rapid Spanish and then returned his attention to the paperwork in front of him.

“That’s me!” I tried the bright smile again. He glanced up with a harassed look.

“I mean the person who flew the plane.”

“Sí. That’s me.”

He furrowed his brow but finally got up from the desk. His too-tight jacket rode up over his waist.

I waved the form in front of me. “I also need to get this signed by someone in the tower.”

He glanced at the paper in my outstretched hand but didn’t take it. Then he spoke to me in slow and concise English. “I need to speak to the pilot of the plane.”

The young man hovered behind the desk, twisting his hands.

“Yes.” I took a deep breath, trying to drown out the blood pumping through my ears. “I am the pilot of the plane.”

“You?”

“Me.”

He slipped back into Spanish. “¿Sola?” Alone?

My friendly smile had long since slipped off. “Sí, sola. Alone. Me. I am the pilot of the plane.”

He stepped past me and looked over towards the General Aviation parking.

“Where is the plane?”

I pointed. He stared at the Cessna as if perhaps I had some able-bodied young man hiding behind the wing. When no one appeared, he scowled, snatched the paper out of my hand and stormed out of the room.

The young assistant took a step to follow him and then paused. He glanced around before putting a hand on my shoulder to pull me closer. “I think that’s great!” he said in a whisper, and then turned to run after his boss.

The young man’s proud smile undid the knot in my throat. What I was doing was great! It didn’t matter what some overheated damn bureaucrat thought. I was doing a solo cross-country: how could that not be great? I was flying alone, in a foreign country, in command of a beautiful plane on a beautiful day in a … well, less than beautiful airport. But amazing, nevertheless.

By the time the man in the too-tight jacket returned, nothing could dampen my broad smile. He handed me the certificate with a grunt. Someone had signed to say that I had landed at the airfield, all I had to do now was make it back home. I clapped my hands in glee and chattered happily as I paid the landing fee, ignoring his stony silence.

I’d planned to stop for a coffee but I was in such a good mood, I saw no reason to delay the rest of my flight. Besides, this was the easy bit. I just needed to fly straight back to Torre del Mar and then make a right turn to Axarquia.

It was impossible to get lost as I just had to follow the coastline. The worst possible case was if I saw the rock of Gibraltar come into view which would mean I had gone too far.

There simply wasn’t anything left to go wrong…

Conclusion

I put off going solo for as long as I could, until my instructor was so exasperated with me that inside the cockpit alone seemed the safer place to be. I learned to fly in Spain with English instructors from a flying school at Oxford, so it was all a bit confusing. Here’s my recollections of that first solo flight away from my home airfield of Axarquía.

The cross country navigation exercise is required to complete the JAR private pilot’s licence. It is effectively the first time the pilot is left alone with the plane, dependent on the new skills learned over the past few weeks. It is now not simply a case of handling the plane but also juggling the full navigation and radio without someone to take over if it becomes hectic. Oliver had a list of prerequisites: the horizon needed to be clear, the wind calm and my practised forced landings needed to be perfect. If, god forbid, I had an engine failure, I had to be able to bring the plane down.

I decided not to go when the other students did their solo cross country navigations: I was the least competent and the least confident of the group. But in the meantime, I’d flown with Oliver every day for the past 11 days. I was desperate to catch up and spent every available minute at the airfield. When I arrived home I did only the work that absolutely couldn’t wait before collapsing into bed until the next morning when I stumbled back into the car and drove back to Axarquía. It was time to take the plunge and just do it – I needed to fly cross country solo.

The weather was bright and beautiful. I spent hours poring over the maps, making sure I understood the distances involved and the heights needed. The wind was slightly gusty but not enough to cause problems.

“Phone me from Granada,” Oliver said. He tried not to look nervous. “We’ll take a decision then as to whether you should continue on or come back.”

“Or you could drive there and bring me back.”

“Not an option.” He handed me a sheet. “And you’ll have to find someone from ATC at each airfield to sign this sheet.” I looked at it, it was in English. “There won’t be a problem, the others did it too.”

I took the sheet and got into the plane.

I felt nervous but ready. I knew how to fly the plane. I’d taken it around the local area, done general handling over the sea, done hundreds of circuits around the airfield. I had flown to both of these airfields with Oliver to do circuits, so I knew the airfields, understood how to approach them and knew what to do when I was on the ground. I had to land and take off on my own but I was used to Axarquía’s runway at a measly 703 metres. Granada’s runway is 2,900 metres and Almería is 3,200 metres! Honestly, I could probably land on those runways sideways.

I knew which radio frequencies I needed, all written neatly on my knee pad. I had copied the information three times to make sure there were no scribbles. At this point, I was close to having the frequencies memorised. I marked my route on the map in bright red wax pen and then again on a blank sheet on my clipboard. I even had my mobile phone with me, so if I got completely confused overflying one of the airfields, I could put the plane into an orbit and phone someone to ask for advice, like they do on the game shows. I thought perhaps I better not mention this idea to Oliver.

There was no further preparation I could think of. It was time to do this.

The flight to Granada was remarkable only in that it was probably one of the most boring flights of my life. I chattered quietly to myself as I flew straight there and was given a straight-in landing. I parked without issue and strode into the building. It had been so slick, I should have been patting myself on the back. Instead, I felt sick to my stomach. I had to talk to people and get my form filled in and pay a landing fee and only now had I realised: I had no idea where to go.

When we came here before Oliver had seemed to know instinctively whom to talk to and what needed dealing with. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I just wanted to stay in my plane. I wondered what they would do if I simply took off without paying. I thought about Oliver’s face if I showed up without my signed form and a military jet chasing after me. I took a deep breath and made my way to the window and smiled hopefully at a man sitting behind a desk.

“I need to pay my landing fees,” I told him in mediocre Spanish, “and also I need someone from ATC. I need someone to sign this piece of paper.”

His friendly demeanour wilted. “Sign what?”

“This paper, see?”

“It’s in English.” He fingered the form with suspicion, he clearly had no idea what it was.

I went for the heartfelt-plea approach. “It’s for my licence. I am a student, learning to fly. The paper is to say that I landed here without breaking any planes or causing any problems.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Did you break any planes?”

“No! I think – I think you’ll find that ATC are happy to sign it. I was told they wouldn’t mind. It has my name and the plane’s registration on it.”

He made a quick phone call and then disappeared down the hall. I was supposed to phone Oliver and tell him I’d landed safely but I didn’t want to risk being on the phone when the man came back. I paced until he arrived a few minutes later.

“He said you did everything perfectly correctly.” His smile was back. “And he signed the form and told me to tell you good luck.”

I hadn’t realised I was holding my breath until he finished. “Gracias,” I said with a huge smile and took the form.

My phone rang, it was Oliver. I started to apologise but he cut me off. “The weather looks fine. Take a break and have a coffee before heading to Almería.” Stage 2 of my cross country flight was on.

Do you remember your first solo cross country flight? Tell me about it in the comments!

Part Two: Almería

As an epilogue: My mother will be visiting Germany and Rome in August and I couldn’t help but notice that she’s already purchased commercial flights for the trip.

Heide is a highly respected literacy practitioner and researcher based in New Mexico. She is highly regarded within her profession and invited all over the world to speak at conferences. She crosses the Atlantic at least once a year and usually ties in the conference with a trip home to Germany to visit her family. She flies United Airlines when she can. She’s very efficient and likes for everything to be just so. She’s also my Mother.

When she told me she was going to be in Italy for a week and then a further week in Germany, I started making plans to meet up with her. I made the mistake of copying my boyfriend on the email with her travel plans. He immediately mailed her.

“Don’t book a flight yet – Sylvia can fly you from Rome to Mannheim.”

Er, Sylvia can do what?

My mother was thrilled. I went into an immediate panic with deadlines looming but Cliff soothed me, promising he’d do the footwork and phone the airfields and sort out the navigation and all I would have to do is fly the plane. How hard could it be?

I relaxed. Big mistake. A week before we were due to fly to Rome, I suddenly realized I had barely flown in the past few months. A look at my log book confirmed my fears: I had not managed to take off a measly three times in the past 90 days, the minimum required for taking passengers. The thought of telling my Mother that I wasn’t going to be able to fly the plane (or at least, not with her in it) spurred me to immediate action: I needed to get up in the air and fast.

The problem is Málaga. Málaga is “the only real airport of merit in Andalucía” and the fourth busiest airport in Spain. In 2006 they handled 13,000,000 passengers and over 125,000 flights.

To put this into perspective, JFK International Airport handled 42.6 million passengers with 25 miles of taxiway and four runways. Málaga has a single 10,500 foot runway with a single parallel taxiway. They are building a second runway, planned for 2010 but in the meantime, it’s a bit busy there.

As a result, Málaga does not allow circuits and have gone so far as to ban VFR traffic during the weekends. The simple solution is to go to Axarquía, the small airfield 30km northeast of Málaga where I did my initial flight training. That’s where all the light aircraft go for practice and I knew I was being unreasonable in trying to avoid it.

I’ve not flown to Axarquía since the flying school took the Cessnas away and I did my conversion to the Piper Saratoga. The airfield is surrounded by hills and the runway is 1090 meters (3500 feet) but it has a displaced threshold and thus the landing distance available is actually 637 meters (2000 foot) if you land on the numbers. This was fine for the Cessna 172s that we trained in but I didn’t fancy trying to get the Saratoga in safely. I knew it could be done: Cliff had taken me there just to prove it was possible. Even then, I closed my eyes as we appeared to race towards the trees at the end of the runway.

However, given a choice between admitting to my Mother that I’d let my license lapse and landing the plane on a runway with an LDA twice the minimum length stated by the pilot’s operating manual, the way was clear. We went to Axarquía.

Cliff relocated the plane from Málaga, a process that involved an hour of prep and 5 minutes in the air. I drove there so that we would have the car: we wanted to leave the plane at Axarquía for its 50-hour check. Also, I wanted to have lunch at Las Cruces, one of my all-time favorite restaurants which is near the airfield but not quite in easy walking distance.

During the week Las Cruces acts as a type of venta, a Spanish restaurant aimed at the working class offering what I like to refer to as “old-fashioned fast food” with a set menu that the waiter rattles off. There are always three starters and three main dishes – you pick one from each category and choose a drink: water, beer or red wine. Because there are so few dishes, your food arrives in minutes. At Las Cruces, they are a bit more up-market: they offer a third course of dessert, again with three options. After your food, the waiter reappears with a cafe sólo and takes your money: a set price of 8 Euros per person. I have seen them deal with difficult tourists who wandered in looking for an authentic experience and then want to personalize their dish: “Can I have chips with that? Substitute the vegetables with some salad, please!” I always cringe but the waiters take it with good grace and comply when they can. Las Cruces is off the beaten track so they don’t get too many tourists, the place is generally full of farm workers and truck drivers shouting jokes at each other as they make their way through the quick and hearty meal.

On Sunday, the scene changes to cater to the after-church crowd with a full menu and more traditional pricing. They run it with a single seating, you are expected to stay the afternoon. They have a huge outdoor barbecue which they fire up at noon with two people working through the dishes as quickly as they can. Lamb chops, slices of pork loin, beef entrecote. Grilled peppers, grilled cheese, grilled bread rubbed with tomato and olive oil. If they can put it on the barbecue, they will and everything is done to perfection.

But the Las Cruces barbecue is off-limits on a flying day: weight and balance would be seriously skewed after such a meal. I knew, deep down, that I shouldn’t combine flying and a three-hour lunch and that it wouldn’t quite be the same if I couldn’t sample their house red wine and so, with regret, we arranged to go in the middle of the week.

I drove up to the airfield and let myself in. There was a new banner draped across the fence advertising the flying school but the place seemed deserted. No one was outside at all. The television at the bar blared the local news into an empty room. A German Shepherd which I remembered well from my training (he ran across the runway in fright as I was landing from my first solo nav flight) was locked behind a chain link fence, watching me balefully.

When I had been here before, everything was organized by the instructors who had flown in from England. I remember them complaining about how lackadaisical everything was, shaking their heads at the street map with Málaga’s visual reporting points drawn onto it, finding out about the local airfields and where we could go for the cross country navigation or even just a few circuits. I hadn’t realized at the time, but they’d livened the place up immensely: from the moment I (or any other student) walked through the door, we were greeted and organized. As I crossed the dusty courtyard, it felt like a ghost town. Cliff had just touched down and parked the plane while I went in search of someone to talk to. I found a woman in the back office who looked unhappy to have been disturbed. I told her that I was planning to fly circuits and she told me not to bother her until I’d done them, then I could pay.

I’d rather hoped for an excuse to put this moment off but Cliff had thoughtfully refueled the plane in Málaga and there was nothing for it: it was time to get into the air. I got into the plane and remembered my first solo flight here: I spoke to myself, DJ style, throughout the circuit. “You’ll be just fine, Sylvia, they wouldn’t have let you out here if they didn’t think you can do it, all you have to do is get the plane up into the air, turn it around, and bring it back down.” As I remembered that first solo, my fear suddenly melted away. I’d been so worried about the short landing distance, the hills, the lack of a tower and blind radio calls that I’d forgotten the huge advantage that this airfield held for me:

I learned to fly here.

I spent 50 hours flying in and out of that airfield, compared to a few hours at any other airfield. I could hear Tom’s voice from the start: telling me to leave my hands on my thighs while I taxied to curb my urge to “steer” with the column, showing me where to pull off the runway and how to best angle the plane into the wind for my power checks without blocking access for other planes. As I took off I immediately heard him telling me that it was inconsiderate to fly too low over villages and that I should turn crosswind just a little bit early to avoid the buildings we could see coming up, the corner of Vélez-Málaga. I knew exactly where the circuit was, as if someone had drawn the lines onto the ground for me to follow.

I struggled a bit trying to get everything done in time for what is definitely a small and very fast circuit in the Saratoga but it was not a big deal – there was no reason for me to be nervous about the airfield at all. By the second circuit I was on top of things and Tom’s voice stopped nagging me by the third. I did two more for luck and then landed the plane just as the banner planes started to head out for their afternoon run over the beaches of Marbella.

My reward followed at Las Cruces. A cold glass of San Miguel, a bowl of picadillo (a soup made with chunks of Spanish ham and pieces of boiled egg) followed by a hot plate of pork in garlic. I was feeling pretty good about everything. In a few days, I would be in Rome, taking my son to see the Coliseum and the Vatican City. Cliff had plotted us a route over the Alps with a slight diversion so that we could fly over my cousin’s Bavarian bed and breakfast on the German-Austrian border which we were saving as a special surprise for my mother. Our destination was Mannheim, the city where I spent a good chunk of my childhood so I was sure I would have no problems finding the airfield, which was quite conveniently located just five minutes away from my Uncle’s house where dinner would be waiting.

What could possibly go wrong?

Part Two: Sylvia’s Mother Said

When we finally got our fuel, we were informed that he had not brought the card swiper with him and one of us would need to accompany him to the office to pay.

We spent just over two hours simply trying to refuel. It would have been more sensible to leave Málaga and land at another nearby airfield just to pick up the fuel for our journey.

On the bright side, while we were waiting a friendly mechanic passed by and volunteered to remove our winterization plates which was a bit of luck!

One good thing about being banned from taking off is that I get to take a lot of photographs. As much as I grumble about Málaga, it sure is pretty…

“You fly just like a woman.”

I blink.

I am sitting in the left seat of a Piper, somewhere over the beautiful English countryside known as the Cotswolds. On my right is Bob, an experienced pilot and examiner in his early 60’s. He is checking me out for my complex rating. We’ve done circuits, a few different landing configurations, then flown out and up for general handling. I remembered my HASELL checks, managed to get the plane into the stall on my second attempt (something about it still makes me shiver) and I am feeling pretty good about the recovery. The steep turn to the left was a bit of a roller coaster but I was within limits when I turned back onto the straight and level. I didn’t panic during the practice false landing and I could swear I saw his mouth twitch into a smile when I had plenty of time spare for a passenger briefing. I thought it was going well.

His words fill the cockpit and time stands still.

I was no stranger to the attitude that women shouldn’t fly. I did my PPL training in southern Spain which was a unique introduction to Mediterranean machismo.

When I did my cross-country solo, I planned a straight-forward route from Axarquía to Granada, Granada to Almería and Almería back to Axarquía. I’d flown the run a few times and I was feeling quietly confident about it. Granada and Almería both have reassuringly large runways and very little traffic, a perfect combination. Everything went fine for the first leg, then I landed at Almería and strolled in to sort out the landing fee.

A red-faced man fired questions at me in Spanish: was it a private plane? Where had it come from? How long was it staying? A younger man stood nearby with a pad and pen as if ready to take notes if I contradicted myself. It was a bit odd but seemed to be going well until he asked about the pilot.

“That would be me.”
“No, I mean the person that flew the plane,” he said. Perhaps he thought it was a language issue.

“Sí.” I gave him a winning smile. “That’s me. I’m the pilot.”

He frowned. “You?”

“Yes, me.”

“All on your own?”

I could feel the blush creeping up on my face, as if I’d done something wrong. “Yes, alone. Sola. I am the pilot of that plane.”

He stepped passed me and walked over towards the apron, looking out towards the plane, as if I had some able-bodied man hiding beneath the wing, ready to pop out and fly the plane when no one was looking.

I fumed inwardly. I was pretty sure he was airport security and had no business stopping me from getting to Ops. I bit my lip, kept the harsh words from escaping.

He shook his head and stormed out of the room. The young assistant stepped forward to follow him and then stopped, put his hand on my shoulder.

“I think that’s great,” he whispered, then rushed to follow his boss.

I grinned like a maniac all the way home.

So yes, I’d seen it before and I knew that there were men out there that felt women just didn’t belong in the cockpit. It wasn’t such a big deal for me, personally, flying for a hobby as opposed to fighting against a glass ceiling. Still, it pushed me through my PPL, made me strive for more than just competent. I wanted to be good, good enough to erode the stereotypes.

“You fly just like a woman.”

Today is important to me, today I am expecting to become a real pilot. And now this. We’re straight and level. The examiner, who seemed a very nice British gentleman when I met him an hour ago, is looking at me expectantly.

I blink again and promise myself I will keep my cool, whatever happens.

“Pardon?” The word comes out as a whisper.

A smile flashes across his face. “By which I mean, you have bothered to learn the theory of what you are doing rather than just jumping in the cockpit and going through the motions. It’s refreshing.”

“You mean, I passed?”

“Of course you passed! That was great. You need experience, of course, but who doesn’t! I’m utterly confident you will continue to apply yourself like you did today and make a very good pilot. That’s the airfield at your two o’clock, by the way, I want to see a flapless landing.”

I set up for the approach, trying to quell the semi-hysterical laughter bubbling in my throat. I passed! How silly of me, to assume that was an insult. I should know better. Women pilots – after all, it’s not some newfangled idea, just think about Amelia Earhart and Amy Johnson!

As the plane touches down, I allow myself a huge smile. That’s a comparison worth striving towards. I want to fly just like a woman.