--- id: flying-free-02-maintain-control title: Chapter 2 – Maintain Control category: Personal Story predicted_narrative_arc: crisis through control to recovery sentiment: resilient emotions: - nostalgia - determination - anxiety keypoints: - Three core emergency steps start with maintain control - Personal check-ride incident shows daydreaming led to being lost and engine failure - Life turmoil from relationships, loss, or change requires the same control-first response - Father's support and secret lessons highlight early motivation to fly - Air Force training reinforced simple actions that work in air and life summary: 'Dean shares his teenage FAA check ride story of getting lost and running a tank dry after daydreaming on a spring flight in Indiana, using it to introduce the first emergency procedure: maintain control of the airplane. He ties the lesson to broader life turmoil from loss, change, or crisis, stressing that panic is optional and control enables recovery. The account draws on his Air Force training and personal history including his father''s death and secret lessons.' tags: - family - faith - work - testing - reverence - warmth - maintain-control - aviation-lessons - check-ride - personal-crisis - flying-free - flying-lessons - life-crisis - air-force-training sycophancy: 0 truth_score: 9 entropy: 4 updated: '2026-09-08T20:49:37Z' vault_stage: 07_CODEX headwaters: COMPA prefix: COMPA enrich_status: ok enrich_blockers: [] enrich_method: llm pipeline_filename: COMPA_2026-09-08_chapter-2-maintain-control.md proposed_topic: Stories lane: Stories description When life throws you into a spin, the first rule is always the same as in the cockpit: maintain control. Dean shares his own near-disaster on his FAA check ride. routing_source: carbon corpus_topic: Stories --- # Chapter 2 ## Maintain Control – Manage Chaos **Full book:** https://deanrush.net/downloads/flyingfreebook.md --- ### Context for the Reader This chapter delivers the first of the three core emergency procedures that structure the entire book: 1. Maintain control of the airplane 2. Analyze the situation / take proper action 3. Land as soon as practical Dean illustrates the principle with a vivid personal story from his teenage years — getting lost and running a tank dry on his FAA check ride. The lesson is simple but profound: panic is optional. The person (or pilot) who keeps control long enough to think clearly almost always recovers. This is the foundation of Section I. --- Usually when unexpected experiences alter your life, there is a reason. Often the rationale for those encounters may well be out of your control. Unforeseen or unwanted change can adversely affect your very existence in many ways, but it does not always have to end up being detrimental to your life. We like to feel we are in control of what happens in our lives. We love the security of our nests and the status quo. When turmoil strikes we feel there is no one in control. For many years I flew airplanes for a living. One of the worst feelings in the air for a pilot is realizing that the normally stable machine you are flying has a serious problem. My first thought in an unexpected emergency was always, “Am I about to reel out of control?” I could be flying along in smooth air and suddenly encounter turbulence. The airplane might dive out of control or go into a wild gyration. At that point I always wondered what was happening. How did I get in this predicament and how do I regain control of the airplane? Like the eagle, it is necessary to maintain control if you are to go to the next stage and freely fly away. There are some relatively simple methods of flying free from turmoil, but you must take control of the situation in order to progress towards freedom and stabilization. Rather than sitting back and saying, “I give up,” there are some simple antidotes available to stabilize your life. These ideas can be used even in the face of upheaval, when you are free falling and trying to stabilize yourself. As a pilot, I learned early in my Air Force career that there are some simple actions that are to be taken in case of an emergency, and they work. They work in the air and in life. Our Air Force instructors taught us over and over again that we were to: 1. Maintain control of the airplane 2. Analyze the situation / take proper action 3. Land as soon as practical Those simple actions are also good for overcoming problems in life. I have discovered that applying them to a crisis is a good start toward recovery. Turmoil in life can come from many sources. It may be caused by a failed relationship, loss of a loved one, financial upheaval, the loss of a job, illness, unexpected change in life’s patterns, or all of the above. The key to growth and moving forward is to find ways to recover and fly away to a better destination. Maintain control, and life can go on and you will have opportunities to recover and fly away. As a seventeen-year-old fledging pilot I was flying to a small airport in Southern Indiana to take my Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) pilot check ride. It was a gorgeous spring day and one that I had looked forward to since I was twelve years old. I had worked night and day for years to obtain the money to take flying lessons from our neighbor at the local airport in order to become a pilot. I was obsessed with the thought of being able to climb in an airplane, fly where I wanted to go, and see the world from above as I motored toward my destination. My mind was totally wrapped around the goal of becoming an aviator, so this flight was very important to me as a seventeen-year-old boy. I was intent on this being a perfect flight. I left my home airport where I had taken lessons, with directives from my instructor, Bob Williamson, to fly directly to the destination airport where the check pilot would be waiting for me. I had fulfilled every requirement of the training syllabus, including cross-country flights, emergency procedures, and operating the airplane. I was excited and ready to become a certified pilot. The flight plan had me flying for about forty-five minutes from the airport where I took off until the arrival at the smaller private field where I would be greeted by the check pilot. I was nervous and yet excited. This was the chance of my lifetime. I knew I wanted to fly for the rest of my life. My father had died suddenly the previous fall, but he had helped me achieve this goal by just allowing me the time to take the lessons before his death. It had to be done in secret because my grandfather was not in favor of any of us flying. I had honored the surreptitious arrangement and not even told my brothers because I was so afraid of losing the privilege. My grandfather would have deemed the flying a waste of time because he had never flown. I loved him but was intent to prove I could make my dream a reality. I wanted to be a pilot. As I motored through the air on this beautiful day in Indiana I looked down at the terrain, dreamt about my father and how proud he would be right now, and even listened to the radio as a couple of pilots conversed with an air traffic controller. I was totally caught up in the entire experience. Wow, I was about to become a certified pilot! Suddenly, my ears detected a miss in the normally purring engine. First there was one miss and then another, followed by a sputter. I looked at the map in my lap and also realized I had been day dreaming about my new license and did not recognize any of the terrain passing under my airplane. I had now been airborne more than one hour on this forty-five minute flight. I was lost. I remembered Bob’s instruction, always maintain control. The miss in the engine went beyond a miss to a dreaded silence. I now had a bona fide reason to panic. This was not going to be an easy way to convince my check pilot that I should be given the right to fly airplanes. I gripped the control wheel to maintain control, looked at my fuel gauges, and realized I had never switched fuel tanks. The engine had quit because there was only a quarter tank of fuel in that wing tank when I took off; I was supposed to have switched to the other wing tank, which was full after lift off. If I had followed the instructions I would have burned down some of the full tank to keep the weight balanced on both sides of the airplane for my check ride. I quickly reached for the lever to switch to the other fuel tank and the engine coughed a couple of times then accelerated to the throttle setting. Whew, I wasn’t going to crash, but now where was I? I began to look around at distinguishing landmarks and finally surmised that while daydreaming I had over-flown the airport where my flight test was to have taken place. I had to reverse course immediately. A thousand things flashed through my mind as I tried to make up an excuse that seemed reasonable for being late. What was I thinking? The answer came in the form of a stiff reprimand from myself a few minutes later when I recognized the airfield where I was intending to land just ahead of me. As I landed and taxied up to the hangar where my check pilot was standing and waiting, I didn’t have an opportunity to say anything or make an excuse. He looked at me and said, “Kid, I wondered if you were going to come back and fly with me after I watched you fly directly over our airport about twenty minutes ago.” He slyly asked, “Did you enjoy the sightseeing or were you really that lost?” It was an extremely embarrassing moment, but the truth came out. The man had watched me fly over, knew I was lost, and it was all on the table. When I told him about the daydreaming and the anxiousness about reaching the dream of becoming a pilot, he laughed and told me to get in the airplane and prove I could fly it safely. I must have done exactly that because, miraculously, he passed me and told me he had done something similar when he was on the way to fly his check ride. I later got to know the man well and his experiences and training helped me long into my career. What had started as a problem swiftly turned into a blessing, which made me a better pilot. The secret to the flight and the check ride had been to maintain control through the moments of panic. Over the years, the lesson of the first check ride never left my mind. Maintaining control is an imperative whenever you are piloting an airplane. It is equally important in life. --- **Next chapter:** Tell God Your Flight Plan for Life! Make Him Smile! **Full book:** https://deanrush.net/downloads/flyingfreebook.md