wrote:
Now that two people she's met have died flying in a relatively short
period of time, she's getting less and less secure about my own flying.
Every time I head out to the airport, she gives me the talk. "Be careful.
Don't die. If you have the slightest doubt, come back." Etc. And so on.

I don't think she'll tell me to stop, because she knows I was a pilot
before we married. But what can I do to reassure her? The pilot
community is pretty small, and losing three people associated with our
little club is pretty scary for her.

Paul,

Sounds pretty familiar... my wife is on the same page as your wife. I
had two co-workers die in a plane crash in 2002, and my boss barely
survived it.

The sad truth is that too many people die in GA accidents, many of
them unnecessarily (bad choices, bad luck, or all of the above).

The best you can do is to be as safe a pilot as you can, demonstrate
to her that you are doing everything you can to stay safe, and resign
yourself to the fact that she probably won't fly much with you. Solo
is how you will do most of your flying unless you have other pilot
friends to go up with.

Dean


Every time somebody drills a hole in the ground the "fear factor" can
and many times goes up for the families of some GA pilots.

It's a fact of life if you choose to fly. Wives especially are subject
to this fear factor and the basic reason for it sometimes escapes their
pilot husbands.
Wives can justify traffic dangers for example, where cars pass each
other going in opposite directions at closing speeds of up to 100mph a
scant 3 feet apart and at the same time worry themselves sick over a
husband getting killed in the airplane he flies for pleasure.
One of the reasons for this is that wives have a tendency to accept what
MUST be done as normal to everyday life, but flying on the other hand is
an optional endeavor and therefore a choice that not only adds to the
danger factor of life, but could have been avoided by the husband.
Make no mistake about it; at least part of what wives fear isn't fear at
all but rather a suppressed feeling that the dangers involved in flying
can be easily avoided if the husband didn't fly. Add children to this
equation and wives can begin to show a real concern for "any" risk they
deem to be an unnecessary risk taken by their husbands.
You can beat the psychology of all this to death, but the bottom line
for people who are individually involved in flying and have families, is
that for some of these individuals, this is an issue that might very
well come up and have to be dealt with.
How each pilot deals with this has to be based on individual situations
and no pat answer is available.
The bottom line is that if you choose to fly and have a family, the
chances are (with rare exceptions) that this decision to fly has been
made by YOU as an individual. To a wife, this can very well mean that
although she has gone along with you on this decision, that she has
suppressed fears and negative thoughts about the risks to HER FAMILY
that you making your decision to fly might not have considered as
seriously as you might have considered the issue.
As I have said previously, there's no set way to handle this situation
that fits everybody. If you make a decision to fly and you have a
family, it's up to YOU to consider the peripheral aspects of this
decision and how it might effect your family.
What works for one pilot won't work with another.
What worked for me was to seriously bring my wife into my world. I
listened to her fears and took them seriously and made damn sure she
KNEW I was taking them seriously. The end result in our case was that my
wife accepted the fact that I was working in a higher than normal risk
area and that I was not only aware of that but capable of dealing with
it on a constant basis. When she realized that the odds were in her
favor on my personal survival in this business, she relaxed and became
an active part of my flying rather than a bystander.
I should add here as well that there are indeed some wives out there who
will never lose their fear when it comes to flying. This is the exact
reason that I have encouraged EVERY student I have ever taught to fly
who had a family to sit down early and involve the family in the decision.
Informed wives are better prepared to handle aviation than uninformed wives.


--
Dudley Henriques