Blind pilot & dog

By Jeremiah Wainwright

The FAA is pretty generous when it comes to who is allowed to fly, allowing via waivers all manner of persons with physical challenges to overcome them in pursuit of a pilot’s license.

Lose a limb? No problem. Lose the use of your legs?

Both arms? No problem. Even deaf folks have been able to get that treasured piece of paper.

But I want to tell you about a guy I knew in Oklahoma who learned to fly without ever seeing an instrument even though every flight he ever took was IFR. That’s because he was blind.

Legally blind. Blind as a bat. Couldn’t see a Coca-Cola truck if it was two feet away. Had a seeing eye dog, a white cane, dark glasses, the whole ball of wax.

Yet he got his student pilot’s license.

Wait, you’re saying, this is a put-on, right?

Nope, happened in Stillwater, Okla. about 20 years ago. Bob (let’s call him that, but it’s not his real name) got the idea from a radio show about how extreme athletes had overcome their disabilities caused by falls, crashes, and what-not.

If a guy with no legs could learn to downhill ski, he thought, I should be able to learn to fly. So he had a friend search around for a biplane, something with wires that would hum and he could feel the wind on his face.

One big enough for his dog.

The friend came up with an old open-cockpit Waco that had pretty much been abandoned and Bob paid to have it restored. Not lavishly, you understand, but safe and reliable.

Then he called up a local flight school and asked if they had any taildragger instructors, preferably old guys with a sense of adventure.

It took three schools before he found Phil (not his real name either) who showed up at Bob’s farm. Phil was there early one bright summer morning and examining the Waco when Bob walked out with Roscoe (the dog, his real name).

“Where’s my student?” asked Phil.

“It’s me,” Bob said. “Which way is the airplane.”

Of course, Bob couldn’t read the expression on Phil’s face, but he did hear him say, “Right in front of you; let’s go.”

Bob and Roscoe had practiced climbing in the front seat plenty of times before he got the nerve to call for an instructor so getting in was no problem. Bob buckled his seat belt and attached Roscoe’s leash to a special fitting he had made up.

Both men put on their headsets and Phil fired up the Waco and turned on the intercom. Bob could feel the blast from the prop and, of course, hear the rumbling of the well-tuned round Lycoming he had fitted.

“Take the stick and let’s go,” Phil ordered. Bob wrapped his huge hand around the Waco’s stick, grabbed the throttle on the left and, pushing the left rudder in a bit, began taxiing out to his sod runway.

“You’ve done this before?” Phil asked.

“Just practicing,” Bob replied. “Never got airborne, ‘though.”

Bob felt the wheels rolling on the dirt and as he eased the throttle forward, felt the tail lift. With his keenly developed sense of hearing and sensitive skin, he could feel any differences in the wind direction as it slid over his face. Phil said nothing.

The Waco began rumbling and bouncing down the “runway” toward a grove of trees in the distance. Bob held the stick slightly forward and the rudder straight until Roscoe let out a single “whoof” and Bob pulled back gently on the stick as the Waco leaped into the air. He continued his climb and when he felt the air temperature drop a few degrees, pulled the throttle back and pushed the nose over.

Roscoe “whoofed” once more and Bob set the trim until the wind across his face was steady and the wires were humming happily in tune.

“We about 1500?” he asked Phil.

“Close enough,” the old instructor said. “How about some 15 degree turns, coming out the same direction we’re headed now.”

Bob eased in some right rudder, laid the stick a tad to the right and fed in a degree of throttle. The Waco circled around the pond below as if it were on a tether connected to the ground.

“Not bad, not bad at all,” Phil remarked. “Try it to the left.”

Bob obliged and the result was the same, with Roscoe whoofing every time they reached their original heading.

Phil ordered some power-off stalls and just before the Waco would break, Roscoe would whoof and Bob would release the back pressure and let the old biplane go back to doing what it did best. As he eased in the throttle, the plane returned to level flight.

Phil ran Bob through 45 minutes of maneuvers and finally noticed that Roscoe’s feet were on the top of the front panel and his mouth would move whenever Bob reached the critical point of a maneuver. Phil was amazed; he’d never seen anyone on their first flight handle an airplane so smoothly.

When it came time to land, all Phil said was, “Okay, let’s take her home.”

Bob slowly turned the plane toward home, Roscoe whoofing when necessary.

As the Waco began to gently descend, Bob slowly pulled the nose up until it was in a three-point stance and eased off the throttle. Roscoe never moved until the plane came to a gentle stop and Bob shut down the motor.

Only then did the dog lick Bob’s face, his only way of saying, “well done, Bob, well done.”

“Okay, here’s the deal,” Phil said after they had all climbed out of the airplane. “I’m going to grant you a student pilot’s license with the following conditions:  no solo flights and no cross countries unless you have a CFI aboard, preferably me.”

“I can live with that,” said Bob as Phil handed him a small sheet of paper.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“It’s a student pilots license. It’s made out to Bob and Roscoe saying that neither of you can fly without the other.”

“Well,” Bob said, “Roscoe’s going to be mighty disappointed but I warned him this could happen.”

For the first time in his life, Roscoe growled, but he did it in a good-natured, canine kind of way.

For many years, people in Oklahoma swore they used to see an old Waco passing overhead with a dog in the front seat ...they could even hear him howling with delight.

Or so they said.

Semi-true story from Oklahoma aviation.