I would like to share some of my thoughts on high maintenance airplanes and high maintenance partnerships. In the end, both are „vessels“ that can either carry us up where we belong, or let us go down in flames, leaving us crushed and burnt. The good news: We have some influence on the outcome…

One airplane I fly regularly has the habit of developing an average of one new „squawk“ per day. She really keeps me busy night and day, coping with whatever comes up next. 

I keep nursing her through the weeks. My daily choice to say „yes“ to her every morning again and again stems from a mixture of curiosity, stubbornness, determination, adventurousness, loyalty and then, more stubbornness still. (Compared to me, even Churchill was a quitter…)

I find nasty words and nicknames for her, but deep in my heart, there are more ingredients that let me hold on, in spite of all adversities: 

Love and compassion. 

We should understand the following:

Like a person that has been mistreated and neglected, an airplane also develops weird, creepy, nasty, terrible traits of character. However, underneath it all is still a beautiful, but very hurt being, that just can not do any better. Every little squawk is nothing more than a scream for attention and love. And what do we do? How do we react, more often than not, instead? 

We curse this poor thing! 

How in the world can we be so cruel? How can we lay so much negative energy and rejection onto someone or something that is already in pain and fails, despite its best efforts, to deliver what they came here for? To suggest that any person, as well as an airplane, misbehaves on purpose, out of an evil spirit, is absolutely unfair and does them very wrong. I can say this from first hand experience, having done so many things wrong despite my true intention to do everything right. Because of neglect by others, and even more so, because of neglect by myself in the past, I just carry my own open maintenance items, like many of us. 

So why do we react so cruel? I would say we are spoilt and have unreasonably high expectations. Instead of acknowledging the miracle (after all, finding your soulmate among billions of people is just as miraculous as a 50 year old piston engine driven aircraft leaving the ground!)

So if a person treats you mean, try next time to remember that he or she is probably hurting a lot and actually needs more love, not less. If someone behaves inconsiderate, selfish, blind to other peoples feelings, it is probably because he or she has not gotten something they desperately needed in their past. And if an aircraft screams in pain by blinking lights, twitching needles, leaking fuel, hydraulics or oil, or whatever else comes up from her aching soul: Try to give her warm thoughts and be grateful for all she does for you, despite her own troubles. See the good intentions in her for keeping that engine running until you were in a safe position to clear the mountains. Acknowledge her meaning well for failing that generator on the ground and not in the cold, dark and windy night sky.

Thank her for leaving the wet spot on the hangar floor, instead of turning it into an engine fire over unlandable terrain. This will, in my view, improve your relationship with yourself (after all, what we do to others, we do to ourselves), and with your „other half that makes you fly“.

Be grateful up there!

Christian