How airplanes fly

About nine years ago I started flying as a way to blow off steam from the stresses of work. As with anything I do, once I got past the initial learning hurdles, I pursued the hobby very aggressively, eventually earning an instrument rating, a commercial certificate (land) and a private pilot certificate in seaplanes. (NB: Flying seaplanes is almost as good as sex.)

In March of 2000, I became a delusional airplane co-owner. Yesterday, I came to my senses and sold my share.

During training you learn a about aviation, radios, weather, and physics. The FAA is especially keen on drilling into students Bernoulli’s principle to help explain how airplanes fly. Bernoulli’s principle is technically incorrect. Based on my experience the last four years, it’s also practically incorrect. A diagram is needed to illustrate what really makes airplanes fly:

As the wallet is opened, a sucking force pulls the $20 bills fly over the top of the wing, generating lift. The faster the plane goes, the quicker the wallet empties. The $20 bill on the bottom represents the cost just for being able to look at the plane in daylight. And don’t ask where the money actually goes. It’s too painful to contemplate.

Each spring, flying magazines across North America write about plane ownership, some suggesting a plane is an investment. I never believed it and assumed the authors were injecting 100LL into their veins. Tonight, for entertainment purposes only, I did put on my Illudium Q36 rose-colored glasses and looked at the comparative return of my share of the plane versus some of my former stock holdings over the same period.

This is purely an academic argument, but the airplane fared a better investment than anything else… but only because it hemorrhaged money slower. Using dot.com logic, I could have saved even more (losses) by buying two or three airplanes!

This is a manufactured argument. I actually got out of most of my stocks by early 2001 when I couldn’t understand the market anymore, nor did I have time to follow it constantly. (Mystery Companies 1 and 2 are former employers. I will have some funny anecdotes when my NDA expires in June.

The co-ownership experience was very good, and if I honestly thought I’d be flying more than 100 hours a year, I’d stick with it. But as it stands, with biking, blogging, and babies, I don’t have much free time to keep my skills sharp.