You know these people whom you meet and immediately trust? You don’t hold back with your life story, and you feel safe to share your worries and sorrows with them as well…?

I am such a person. At least for airplanes. At least for those airplanes with whom I really connect, because I take genuine interest in them. 

I really see their personality and I can hear what they have to tell me. I can feel their pain when something is not right, as well as their joy when they are in their element and being operated in a sensible manner. It is really easy for me to trace down very minor or even complicated discrepancies and I can translate this to the mechanics very well. 

How I found out about this?

I have had a very special relationship with one aircraft I owned in the past. We have been close companions for more than 10 years and we did many „impossible“ things for each other during that time.

While I would readily replace her cylinders in a dark and cold hangar with a flashlight between my teeth, or repair a stuck fuel valve on a frozen lake in 20 degrees below zero, she would carry me over oceans, deserts and mountains in my free time as well as through the windy night skies back home after work. We could really rely on each other, in good times and in challenging times. 

When she was not happy, she had a very subtle way to communicate this to me. She always told me where to look, when something was wrong. And she always did this in due time. This is one side of the story. The other side is: I asked her, and I listened to her answers.

When I asked her if there is a reason to take off the cowling, there was either a distinct „no“, or a distinct „yes“. Sometimes I tested this by looking anyway, when there was a „no“, and I really looked very thoroughly. Never found anything wrong. However, when she said „yes“, I always found something. She told me to look closer, for example, at the left exhaust pipes, and sure enough, there were very fine cracks developing. We then could also negotiate about the urgency and wether I could still complete a flight or not with this or that illness. We gained more and more trust in each other and are looking back to over 1000 hours of safe flying together with a very good dispatch reliability.

So I began doing the same with every airplane I fly regularly, and the results are also very good. I find many snags that have been overlooked before, simply by following my intuition and my sensitivity towards what the airplanes tell me. Again, I enjoy a very high dispatch reliability because of this. 

If someone had told me about things like this 20 years ago I might have doubted their mental state. So I don’t blame you if you do. But still, 

do you listen to what your airplane has to say? If not, give it a try!

Christian