FLAK DAMAGE?
by Dave Wilkerson
Our job may be aviation, but we exist to repair broken lives.
All mechanics, most line crew, and some pilots will see damaged airplanes at some point in their careers. We witness wasted wingtips, dented leading edges, and broken wheel fairings, plus damage so extensive that the airplane is an obvious loss. In time, one may see that heart-stopping in-flight damage that is clearly more than an aircraft can endure, yet it survives to taxi in. During the 2nd World War, such happened after bombers encountered deadly, ground-fired Flak. Airplanes are amazing creations – a blend of lightness and strength just enough to do the job with exactly the reserve hardiness to handle the worst likely situation. But not the worst possible situation. Designers, sometimes long retired or doing other work by the time their designs fly; remain a part of the team for as long as their creations are airworthy. Ah, there’s the rub! Designers are well trained, but not all pilots are. Being a good pilot means not placing one’s aircraft in a position that demands extreme pilot skill or cunning. It is too bad that most people are not also trained to do the same in life.
Occasionally transient pilots transit unfamiliar airports and become infatuated with some derelict airplane evicted to a lonely post on some unreachable tract of that airfield. Espying such derelicts invariably sends pilots to reflective moods for the rest of the day. Reasons for airplanes’ banishment to an aerodrome’s nether regions are legion . . . some aircraft simply cost too much to operate. Others have found their uninsured ends in accidents or incidents that leave them teetering just on the point of hope; if only an affordable used wing appears, or perhaps a group of aficionados of this type will take up the restoration cause. Meanwhile these airplanes sit, each waiting for some aeronautical savior to make them whole once more. And forlorn, suffering crushing non-entity-hood in contemptuous whistling winds, beneath punishing suns and storms, these once beloved airplanes rot.
Each decade, pilots embrace baseless hopes of resurrecting some rare find at some far-flung landing field, each certain that the low cost of acquiring the derelict would absorb the cost of restoration. Thankfully, most of those pilots embrace reality soon after researching even the most basic expenses that lie in wait. For those who embrace their dreams a little longer by imagining a corps of helpful type-enthusiasts, most realize in time that the aerial outcast was derelict precisely because no such cadres exist. Always these pilots or mechanics find souls ‘interested’ in such a project, but too few committing time or money to an aeronautical orphan. It happens. Naturally, how a flying machine came to be in that woeful shape also affects the likelihood of some machines being returned to the air. Saddest of all are those machines that gradually fly less, and less yet, then finally simply sink into sniggering weeds. Rotting away from neglect is wretched for man and machine alike.
Yes, this happens also to people. Pilots stop flying for different reasons, but the saddest of all are those who simply disappear unnoticed from their friends’ worlds. One of aviation’s most often asked questions remains ‘Whatever happened to old so-and-so?’ Whatever, indeed. Aviation can be a strange social environment. Some personalities seem to be forever at the pinnacle of the social landscape: everybody knows their names; they serve on committees and receive honors. Then one day someone realizes that they haven’t heard from or about ‘old so-and-so’ for a while. This is the world’s fashion. Christian aviators should be aware of this. However wonderful our colleagues’ lives appear, we should recognize that things are rarely what we perceive. We should be ready to help.
We should spiritually prepare to repair the crack or hole that we see in a brother or sister’s life. Prayer is our starting point, and is good, but is rarely enough to keep a person from mimicking one of these fading airplanes. Aviation people differ from the regular civil population because we think differently. We fix things ourselves. We fear unseen, with a fiery intensity: fear of appearing substandard, of seeming to be weak, or needing help – fear of not knowing. Oh, most people despise the appearance of being sub-par, but in aviation a moment’s weakness can herald death to one’s career. Or to the person. Some have said that the Army of Christ is the only one that shoots its wounded; if true aviation’s brotherhood remains a close second. For Christians in aviation service, the opportunity is strong to develop principles of charity. Charity, like aviation, offers hope to a reaching world.
Photo and Text © David R. Wilkerson, 2004
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