A Scary Prospect -- What to do?

In that purple gasoline tanker?? g

Hmm. Good point. That truck probably IS way more dangerous than the plane.

;-)

I bet many more answers to your questions will be revealed the closer he
gets to soloing.

No doubt. But will my heart be up to the stress?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

heh, heh, heh... This is hysterically funny (old dad type, sons and
daughter)...

OK, you've had a ton of well reasoned advice... Now I will give you the
the real life pearl, here...
DISABLE THE AUTO PILOT!

cheers ... denny

"Just think, Dad, in two years I'll be able to take a date out in the
plane!"

Breathe easy Jay, he'll have to be 17 before he can take his date in Atlas,
so that will give you a little more time to worry. He and his date will
have to practice in the glider for a year. Unless of course, his date is
his instructor!

Seriously, I'd worry more about the instructor that you and your family
choose for your son. I'd look for a well seasoned type that has sucseffuly
taught plenty of young impressionable zero time teenagers. Experiance with
teaching specifically young people to fly will be invaluable. Mood swings,
lack of motivation, clouded thinking, zoneing out, forgetting appointments
are all things that every instructor has to deal with, but with teenagers
they all happen much more frequently. A patient, caring, and understanding
instructor will be a must!

If you can find one that also is an A&P that can put your son to work around
the shop to help earn his flying time, all the better. The more experiance
around airplanes, not just Atlas, the better. He'd get a very good
understanding about why you don't do this or do that while flying from
seeing the insides of some of the local planes.

The seriousness of the potential consiquences of inapproriate actions must
be instilled deeply into a young pilots mind. I know one father CFI that
was teaching his son to fly. He was very serious about never getting the
airplane in any unsafe condition. One day after his son skidded around the
corner of death while turning base to final and behind the power curve, the
father announced "Great, you just killed us." On the ground he explained
the problem, what and why it happened, then told his son to type up a
funeral announcement for both of them and to show it to his mother. When
his mother asked why they were dead, his father made the son explain it to
the mother. Sometimes getting through the thick know it all skull of a
teenager requires drastic or dramatic methods. Find an instructor that will
do what ever it takes to make your son a safe pilot. Once he get's his
ticket, demand frequent recurrent training. Someday he'll be in the left
seat, his girl in the right, and mom and dad in the back.

Jim

Sounds like a job for Rick Durden.

Jim Burns wrote:
Breathe easy Jay, he'll have to be 17 before he can take his date in Atlas,
so that will give you a little more time to worry. He and his date will
have to practice in the glider for a year. Unless of course, his date is
his instructor!

Jay,

Others have talked about the insurance and liability issues. This is my
view from a slightly different perspective:

If his instructor and the FAA think he's ready to be a real pilot and take
passengers, then he's probably ready. Let him go. My father, a long time
Air Force pilot (http://users.erols.com/viewptmd/Dad.html) never wanted any
of his kids (3 boys) to fly. We all ended up getting our tickets, although
our youngest brother got his glider ticket only (and the only one who did it
with Dad's acquiesence and support), and I waited nearly too long. Even so,
Dad tried to discourage me from getting my license at 56. I was "too old"
by then. He died two weeks before I soloed.

I think Dad never was able to decouple in his mind our adolescent
irresponsibility from the maturity we all eventually developed. He just
assumed that we were still the goofy, dangerous teenagers he suffered with
when we were young. Too bad. Never being able to let go was always a block
to our developing much more than an adversarial relationship with him. He
was even trying to run our lives from his bed the last couple of years of
his life.

Don't let this sort of thing happen with you and your kids. Get them the
best training they can have. Let them experience as much of life as you
can, while you're still able to have some modicum of control. Show them how
to live a full and responsible life. Prepare them for complete independence
from you, and then let them go. They're going to go eventually anyway,
whether you want them to or not, so you might as well prepare them the best
you can first. You'll find that they come back as great friends.

I am reminded of a story Susan Stamberg related on NPR one time. A woman
had just helped her daughter move into her first college dorm. They said
goodby, and as the woman prepared to head back home, she sat in the car and
watched her daughter walk back into the dorm. With tears in her eyes, she
whispered after her daughter, "OK, now fly."
--
Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways)


"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:BSuUd.70922$tl3.52178@attbi_s02...
Mary and I have tried very hard to treat flying as an uncommon -- but
perfectly normal -- family activity, and that's all my kids have ever
known.
My 14-year-old son has 13 hours in his logbook, and can climb, descend and
hold altitude, track a heading, determine the proper runway to land on,
and
(I suspect) probably land the plane -- although I've never let him get
below
200 feet on final approach. To him, flying a light plane is no greater
challenge than beating the latest Playstation game, and going for a plane
ride is something he's done over 400 times in his short life...

Thus, we hope he'll be taking flight lessons this summer, assuming all
goes
well with his grades. He thinks he's ready, and I hope he earns his
glider
rating before next school year starts.

All well and good, but the magnitude of this endeavor had truly not sunk
in
until he quite innocently said:

"Just think, Dad, in two years I'll be able to take a date out in the
plane!"

After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I just laughed -- but this brings
up
a serious point that I've never seen addressed here. For those of you who
own aircraft, and have kids that have learned to fly, how did you handle
"borrowing the plane"? I mean, it's not quite the same as letting him
take
the pickup down to the corner grocery...

Do you guys let your kids fly your plane?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Don't let this sort of thing happen with you and your kids. Get them the
best training they can have. Let them experience as much of life as you
can, while you're still able to have some modicum of control. Show them
how
to live a full and responsible life. Prepare them for complete
independence
from you, and then let them go. They're going to go eventually anyway,
whether you want them to or not, so you might as well prepare them the
best
you can first. You'll find that they come back as great friends.

Great words, Bob. Thanks.

I just have a hard time looking at my 14 year old son with an unjaundiced
eye. One minute he's the bright kid that has tested into the top 2% in the
nation -- and the next minute he's dumb as a box of rocks. And it's a roll
of the dice as to which "version" you might get at any given time.

Putting him in a plane, solo, with such wild intellectual variability is
going to be more challenging for me than for him, I'm sure. I'm trusting
that the training process will be a real maturing experience.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:
I just have a hard time looking at my 14 year old son with an unjaundiced
eye. One minute he's the bright kid that has tested into the top 2% in the
nation -- and the next minute he's dumb as a box of rocks. And it's a roll
of the dice as to which "version" you might get at any given time.

Putting him in a plane, solo, with such wild intellectual variability is
going to be more challenging for me than for him, I'm sure. I'm trusting
that the training process will be a real maturing experience.

Don't put all your trust in the training process. More likely than not,
you're son will fluctuate back and forth between bright and "dumb as a box
of rocks" all the way into his late teens, if not early twenties.

My daughter turned out great, and is now a productive part of a society
with a college education and a good job, but when she was in her teens...
that was a different story. No matter how much you love them, and want to
"trust their judgement", the fact is that they're not finished developing,
and they make A LOT of wrong decisions. Do you want your son making those
wrong decisions at 5000 feet in your precious 235?

--- Jay

--
__!__
Jay and Teresa Masino ___(_)___
http://www2.ari.net/jmasino ! ! !
http://www.oceancityairport.com
http://www.oc-adolfos.com

My daughter turned out great, and is now a productive part of a society
with a college education and a good job, but when she was in her teens...
that was a different story. No matter how much you love them, and want to
"trust their judgement", the fact is that they're not finished developing,
and they make A LOT of wrong decisions. Do you want your son making those
wrong decisions at 5000 feet in your precious 235?

Ah, yes -- therein lies the rub.

It's going to be an interesting decade, methinks.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Are you afraid for your airplane or your child or the cost? Or all three?
In one sentence you are positive about the idea of him taking flying
lessons. In another you are worried about him using your airplane to go
flying in. I'm a long way from facing this issue as my children are 7, but
I think that I will either trust their judgement or not. If I trust their
judgement, they can use the airplane. I don't know how I will handle the
cost. On one hand, you don't want to provide them with thousands of dollars
to fly around and impress their friends, but on the other, you want them to
be competent and they can't be without flying frequently. 16yr olds can't
afford to pay for much flying and I'd rather have them do well in school.

I would be particularly concerned about flying dates. There is too much
potential for distraction.

Mike
MU-2


"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:BSuUd.70922$tl3.52178@attbi_s02...
Mary and I have tried very hard to treat flying as an uncommon -- but
perfectly normal -- family activity, and that's all my kids have ever
known. My 14-year-old son has 13 hours in his logbook, and can climb,
descend and hold altitude, track a heading, determine the proper runway to
land on, and (I suspect) probably land the plane -- although I've never
let him get below 200 feet on final approach. To him, flying a light
plane is no greater challenge than beating the latest Playstation game,
and going for a plane ride is something he's done over 400 times in his
short life...

Thus, we hope he'll be taking flight lessons this summer, assuming all
goes well with his grades. He thinks he's ready, and I hope he earns his
glider rating before next school year starts.

All well and good, but the magnitude of this endeavor had truly not sunk
in until he quite innocently said:

"Just think, Dad, in two years I'll be able to take a date out in the
plane!"

After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I just laughed -- but this brings
up a serious point that I've never seen addressed here. For those of you
who own aircraft, and have kids that have learned to fly, how did you
handle "borrowing the plane"? I mean, it's not quite the same as letting
him take the pickup down to the corner grocery...

Do you guys let your kids fly your plane?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay's worried he is going to get even less PIC time.

Mike Rapoport wrote:
Are you afraid for your airplane or your child or the cost? Or all three?