Flying By the Seat of My Pants

And surviving!

It's wonderful to be back in my garden at Evergreen after my late night flight for medical support! When we experience difficulties we realise how wonderful our everyday life is.

Like most people, I prefer to fly in huge aeroplanes. The bigger the better.

However, last year I had an emergency one-hour flight in a tiny Australian Royal Flying Doctor Service aircraft. It took me from a small hospital out in the country to a highly equipped one in the city because the removal of my gall bladder had led to complications.

My heart sank when I first saw the plane. It looked more like a cricket crouching on the tarmac than a vehicle fit for air travel, and it was going to move through the air with the aid of propellers, like Sopwith Camels used in WW1 and Tiger Moths in WW2.

It was 10.30 p.m. when I was wheeled on a stretcher up to a gaping hole in the side of the plane and hydraulically hoisted aboard along with my boldly striped black and blue bag containing a change of clothes, a book (John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes), and my toothbrush.

There were no padded seats, overhead lockers, buttons to press to summon a flight attendant, or free snacks. The stretcher on which I lay was strapped into what appeared to be a luggage compartment, and my bag was hooked onto the inner shell of the plane with a bungee cord. A young doctor sat on the single seat, just to my right, so close I could reach out and grab his arm should I begin to panic.

Another patient, whose heart was playing up, was also brought onboard. I couldn’t see him from my prone position. His head started where my toes ended. I heard him say that he suffered from motion sickness. Not a good conversational opener.

The door was shut by the pilot, who then moved past me to step through a gap behind my head into the cockpit. He was old and bearded, wore a yellow Hi-Viz vest and whistled though his teeth.

I stared up through the porthole into darkness as the engine started. The propellers were out of sight so I just hoped they were beginning to spin. There were several jerks and we started moving. Before long, with a shuddering roar that shook my stretcher almost loose from its moorings, we were airborne.

Flying By the Seat of My Pants

As I lay there, tense and sweaty, I recalled the expression flying by the seat of your pants — meaning, to instinctively respond to what is happening, to figure out what to do as things unfold, rather than making plans.

This expression came about because in the olden days pilots literally did this before there were instruments to help them keep level as they flew. All they could do was sense what their bottom was doing on the seat. If their bottom slid forward in the seat, they knew they were heading for the ground and needed to adjust the joystick if they didn’t want to crash. If their bottom slid backward, they knew the plane was pointing up to the heavens and unless they wanted to meet their Maker sooner than later, they had to make a quick adjustment to their flight path.

Their trouser seat guided the plane.

Promptings from their bottom kept them safe and in control.

Another more modern phrase which means flying by the seat of your pants is to be present.

On that flight I was present. My whole body was on high alert, not just my bottom. I had no specific plans. My only plan, so to speak, was to be ready to respond to whatever was happening.

As we flew closer to Perth and headed east to land at Jandakot Airport, the easterlies roaring over the Darling Ranges buffeted the little plane. We bobbed like a champagne cork on stormy southern seas. The doctor gripped his rattling arm rests and refused to look sideways at me and catch my eye. He didn’t want me to see how worried he was. He was probably thinking he was too young to die.

‘I’m going to be sick,’ moaned the other patient above the rattle and roar of the engine.

‘It’s too bumpy for me to leave my seat!’ the doctor shouted. ‘I’ll chuck you a vomit bag.’

As he said this, he hurled an object through the air that soared over my toes before hitting the poor man in the chest, probably giving his heart a timely jump-start.

The rest of the flight was enlivened by the sounds of him spewing fitfully into the bag. I tried to distract myself by recalling what I’d been reading in O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes before I ended up in this weird situation. Something about suffering bringing compassion, perhaps, but that’s all I could recall.

We landed. The hydraulic system, after a false start that left me suspended mid-air for several shuddering seconds, lowered me to the ground and I was pushed along another tarmac under a starry sky into a miniature airport terminal.

‘Is this yours?’ someone yelled, holding up in the air so I could see it from my prone position a boldly striped black and blue bag which now boasted a torn plastic handle.

I admitted it was mine, he hooked it onto my stretcher, and that completed the quickest and least snoopy Customs and Baggage Claim session I’ve ever endured.

An hour later I was tucked between crisp white sheets in a bed on the seventh floor of Fiona Stanley Hospital, while a doctor and nurse made plans for me. I no longer needed to fly by the seat of my pants.

But it had been an invigorating experience. I was truly present, every moment of that flight.

Lately, when life seems to get clogged up and what I planned doesn’t happen, I recall that time in the small plane, when I lived each moment with alertness.

Being present — flying by the seat of my pants — is an interesting way to live.

Like that plane ride, it’s exciting. There’s never a dull moment.

Everything is fresh and new.

And even if I do make plans, I’ve decided that it’s best that I still remain present, whether those plans unfold as neatly as I’d hoped, or fall in a heap at my feet.

A big Thank you! to all the intrepid pilots, doctors, nurses, mechanics and volunteers who keep the Royal Flying Doctor Service in the air, serving those who live in rural and outback of Australia.

Love, Marlane