A Passion for Flying...Where are Aviation Safety Ethics Today

Sammy Mason of the Hollywood Hawks

Flight Instruction—Part 3-

Our days at the Santa Paula airport, getting on the airport with our bicycles, observing and asking questions to pilots and aircraft owners were a direct result of the early days of aviation culture.

Let’s look at the origins of flight instruction.

Flight instruction started out for most people when they learned to fly after they bought a plane. They would take instruction after they saw barnstormers who crossed the country, took a ride and realized the advantages of flying above the terrain.

Farmers, ranchers, and businessmen were all enchanted with the idea of getting from point “A” to point “B” when they wanted, weather permitting.

This led to flight instruction that consisted of getting just enough flying time with an experienced pilot to know the controls and learn how to get the aircraft aloft, and return to earth. Most of the time the experienced pilots would jump out and solo a prospective pilot, not so much when the newbies were ready, but for self-preservation.

Better flight instruction and aviation would have perhaps progressed more rapidly during the period of 1910 to 1920 if there had not been World War I.

Some might argue this point but German aviation records show that the average pilot’s time aloft as a fighter pilot lasted only 14 days. When they were shot down, or killed in action. This may have elevated the need for flight instruction to make new replacement pilots every two weeks but did not sufficiently explain aerodynamics in a manner whereby the pilot might experience the result of aerodynamics.

Many of the maneuvers developed during the conflict were to avoid being shot down, quick instincts appeared to be thwarted by jammed guns, engine and structural failures, fires and so on.

World War II flight instruction was developed in a more systematic manner developed with a pause in war between 1917 and the late 1930s (in Europe).

Knowing  that air superiority was just as, and in some cases more important the that of ruling the oceans the U.S. developed flight programs for every aspect of military planning.

The regime of flight instruction was based on some solid recognition of aeronautics, and a lot of interest in speed, weapons, and delivery of explosives. So in a nutshell the military approach required some expertise or at least some exposure to pushing the envelope both in speed and payload.

In short American pilots were getting trained using a syllabus, and practical experience with knowledgeable flight instructors who had flight experience in less capable aircraft, thus the knowledge of how far to push the envelope, and once busted how to return to manageable flying.

Cases in point are the test pilots of the Sammy Mason era, who knew how to fly out of an aircraft’s negative characteristics by a thorough understanding of aerodynamics (a lot of altitude and a bit of luck). They knew what a good flying machine was, and what a bad machine with some flying characteristics they should beware of.

History shows us that the first Civil Aeronautics Administration leader came from the Army Air Corp, thus the strict regime of pilot training and regulations directly after WWII.

Today there are few instructors that will routinely approach spinning an aircraft without a lot of altitude, parachutes and a few Hale Mary’s before the flight. The reason is that they are only biding their time to build flight hours, move on and fly commercially by climbing the ladder from First Officer to Pilot in Command (PIC). Besides the regulations now don’t require it…

Basically their cop out, or shall we say the system’s ability to allow this cowardly approach to teaching physics has created FAA certified flight baby sitters.

So the FAA had to create Practical Test Standards to guideline certain areas and regulations necessitating demonstration to a designated pilot examiner before achieving a new authorization or license.

Strangely spinning an aircraft has been left out of basic maneuvers and not a requirement to become a flight instructor (unless you fail an oral and practical test to identify the incipient stages of a stall spin). The PTS has served only to create “Aviation Ego Gods” of Designated Pilot Examiners beyond reproach not better pilots, but better rule followers.

This comes at a time when FAA and NTSB statistics show that the increasing and overwhelming cause of accidents among Part 91 and General Aviation accidents and incidents nationally on take-off and landing, are categorized as a “loss of control” by the pilot.

What an embarrassment to those test pilots, instructors and CFIs of the past who mentored, watched advised and policed their apprentices until they earned wings of flight knowledge.

More soon in part 4-

A Passion for Flying...Where are Aviation Safety Ethics Today

Part 2-
Continued from 2/09/2013

The concept of mentoring and decision making was used as part of the Certified Flight Instructor’s mantra, at least with the flight instruction that I received in the 1960s. 

While my first lessons were with Mike Dewey of Dewey Aviation at the Santa Paula( KSZP) airport, and he was good…he soon became too busy. Dewey’s business was like this...flying from 7 a.m. on the weekends until dark.

As my father was getting his license I was hanging around the Dewey’s Fixed Base of Operations (FBO) during his instruction.

All the students were watching their wrist watches to see if it was their time to fly. When a plane landed and was five minutes late it backed up the schedule. My first lessons were only half-hours and this put a crimp in Dewey’s days.

Once my friend Tony, the son of Sammy Mason turned 17-years old he got his Private License and immediately started on getting his Commercial license and Certified Flight Instructor ratings.

He did both all in one day…on his 18^th birthday.

This thrilled my other airport friends Johnny, Harrison and Pete and my bother Vince as we spent our free time riding bicycles all over the airport checking each hangar to see what new was going on, or who was getting ready to go flying.

This meant that we could go flying, get instruction by renting a plane with fuel and pay our buddy now a professional pilot for our dream of learning to fly.

I mowed lawns, cleaned yards, raked leaves and pulled weeds every weekend to earn money to go flying. Once my lawns were done I hopped on my 10-speed bike and peddled down Ojai Road to the airport south of town.

Tony was professional, ethical and was a mirror of his father, dark complexion, bushy blondish eyebrows six feet tall wearing Ray-Ban aviator’s glasses. While he didn’t wear white dress shirts with epaulets, usually blue jeans, and a T-shirt with tennis shoes, his instruction style was thorough to the point and well explained.

Flying lessons with Tony were discussion before we flew, and after each lesson then he would sign his observations and pass you your logbook.

He posted progress and what we were going to do next on every entry in my logbook.

“Air work practicing power-off, power on stalls, slow flight…good recovery. Next lesson landing approach work. Anthony Mason, CFI #XXXXXX 1/29/68”

Tony had the inside scoop on everything airport at Santa Paula as not only was his father connected but his older brother was also flying almost daily.
 The Mason’s hangar was close to Dewey’s outfit and we used to all gather in the hangar and talk flying while we were challenged by Tony to questions about aeronautics.

One time we entered the Mason’s hangar and found two or three wooden crates in the back of the hangar covered with a foreign language shipped to a M. Slovak.
This piqued our curiosity and became the center of conversation...what aircraft could be in those huge wooden crates?

Growing up around this airport was like reliving the different stages of aviation from the 1920s to the apex of general aviation’s aircraft manufacturing in the 1900s. DeHavilland DH-5 mail plane, Travelair, Curtiss Robin, Monocoupe, Curtis PT-19, PT-22, Ryan STs, Aeronica Bathtub, Staggered Wing Beechcraft, Howard DGA, Stearman Biplane, Cessna T-50 “Bamboo Bomber,” AT-6, SNJ-4, Pitts Special S-1,2, Thorpe T-18, Cosmic Wind Goodyear Racer, Cassutt Racer, etc.

All these wonderful aircraft on one airport and all flown by professional pilots many who flew during the week at Van Nuys, Burbank, or Los Angeles International airports, keeping their personal aircraft at Santa Paula.
Soon we would find out what was in those boxes and what new aircraft would join our bevy of flying machines at the airport.

To be continued...Next: Our Brother in Flight Joins the Angels

A Passion for Flying...Where are Aviation Safety Ethics Today

 Teaching us to fly right!

               Sammy Mason


by Rob Stapleton

Its not hard to imagine how those of us who have been watching birds fly while growing up and admiring nature would yearn to fly ourselves.

It was not just the flapping of wings, or the circling above that first caught my eye it was the precision and exactness of a birds landing that interested me.

The glide into the area, the change in their wing's angle of attack, and then the back winging motion to set down in an exact spot.

Amazing, truly amazing, to see small and large birds land on telephone and power lines high above the streets were we were playing below.

Later I took this fascination to the local airport where I grew up.

Santa Paula, California had a family owned airport and once I could break away from my weekend chores it was a race to head to the airport. I rode my bicycle down Ojai Road as soon as the chores were done, once arriving it was pure joy to watch aircraft taxing for take off, rotating for take-off and the engine at full power climbing above.

Of course I always imagined that it was me, pushing the rudder pedals, checking the mags and then fire-walling the throttle to thrust forward and lurch into the sky.All the time adjusting the pitch for climb and soaring above my home town toward the clouds above.

This would become a passion that witnessed pilots from all over the world coming to our airport. Mira Slovak, Rex Wells, Mike Dewey, Steve McQueen, Cliff Roberts, others and then there was Sammy Mason.

Mason was a quiet man, religious balding with caterpillar bushy eyebrows, and a quick smile... a man of precision and decisive action.

He was the father of my friend, later to become my flight instructor Anthony "Tony" Mason. Named after Tony LeVier a aviation racer, and test pilot for Lockheed.

Tony's father Sammy was also a test pilot for Lockheed, and well known for his flying from his days when he led the Hollywood Hawks barnstorming group to aerial antics over California.

Has I transitioned from a nameless boy on a bike to a boy who liked to help clean aircraft and polish wind screens, conversations about aviation safety were easily heard in the hangars among aviators that used my talents.

My style was to work hard, act like I wasn't listening and then focus on what they were saying. This way they wouldn't stop, thus continuing the conversation about airspeed, engine settings, short field take offs and landings. Just the stuff any teenager would love to know, and do and do it I would.

What does any of this have to do with ethics or aviation safety you may ask? Most conversations rallied around the topic of flight safety. Be it aerobatics, racing or flying cross country it seemed that safety was the key word, and objective of these professionals.

Sometimes the rumor mill (which all airports possess) would be how one of the more experienced pilots would talk to another less experienced pilot to give him or her an idea of how close they were coming to their demise with their manner of flying.

Those of who feared and admired these pilots, and Mason was one of these were our idols.
To be continued-