Sometimes your number is just up

Sometimes your number is just up. This morning, when I saw a photo of the student pilot killed near Feilding on Monday I remembered her as a woman I sat next to when I sat my Aviation Law paper a few weeks ago. Then I thought, but what would she be doing sitting an exam in Wellington? Read on to find she has recently being training in Wellington and lived in Waikanae. We only exchanged smiles, both focussed on exams. She was sitting navigation, evident from the map and instruments in use. My recollection of her is she looked about my age but was with a man who looked quite a bit older who waited in the visitor area during the exam. The first crash report told of a woman "about 50" so others also thought she was younger than 64. I thought when I heard the initial report, how many women "about 50" are aviation students flying around the Kapiti Coast/ Manawatu area? Can't be many. There aren't even that many female students full stop. We were the only two in that exam room....

I haven't been flying since I passed the biannual flight review mainly because during the school holidays I couldn't book the plane I wanted. For some reason most of the Cessna 152 fleet was out for maintenance. Perhaps as the organisation is orientated around being a commercial school for mainly international students term-time applies and holidays present the best opportunity for maintenance, required every 100 hours of flight time. But the two air crashes during that short space in time since have served to remind me that flying requires immense vigilance and diligence and every pilot wants to avoid that sick sensation of knowing there is terrain or another plane in close proximity but can't sight it. And even close to home, within landing distance of the runway, the danger can be elevated by higher density of traffic. RIP Pat Smallman and Jessica Neeson. They both had the aviation bug and died for it.