Illustration by Drew Shannon
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In the days after the recent aviation tragedy that claimed two pilots’ lives at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, I found myself thinking about the first time my then 22-year-old son Joel took me flying last summer. I didn’t expect to be the weak link.
He sat in the left seat of a two-seater Cessna, calm and focused, speaking to air traffic control in the same measured tone I had heard at the kitchen table while he studied to be a pilot. Precise. Certain. I wore the headset, determined not to interfere. I’ve never felt uneasy on commercial flights.
Since he was eight, aviation has been constant in his life, always aiming to fly commercial jets. He says it began at an aviation museum during a family vacation. Something clicked. He doesn’t remember much else from that trip, but he remembers standing under the wing of an old aircraft and feeling that this was it. Other interests came and went. This one stayed.
I drove him to early morning classes when he was 12 years old. At dinner he explained lift, drag and crosswinds with the intensity of someone describing a language he intended to speak for life. Training to be a pilot doesn’t require working the ramp, but he chose to: fuelling aircraft, loading cargo, de-icing wings, assisting passengers. He wanted to understand the industry from the ground before commanding it from the air.
I’ve come to appreciate the technical side through him. I ask questions about turbulence and takeoff speeds. He answers carefully. Somewhere along the way, he stopped being the child asking questions and became the one answering mine.
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Up in the air that day, he decided to show me what the plane could do. One moment we were flying level; the next, he banked. The horizon tilted and held. My stomach shifted.
At first I told myself it would pass. He had worked toward this for years. I didn’t want to be the reason it ended early.
But the dizziness built steadily. Heat rose behind my eyes, my hands felt damp and the headset throbbed. When he asked how I was doing, I tried to answer normally. My voice didn’t co-operate.
He looked over and studied me longer than usual. Not as a son checking on his father, but as a pilot assessing a situation. His tone changed slightly. “We’ll head back.”
There was no debate. No embarrassment. Just a decision. I began to protest, reflex more than conviction, but he was already adjusting our course. Watching him do that, I felt something unexpected: relief, certainly, but also the recognition that he was the steadier one in the cockpit.
On the ground, the spinning didn’t stop. We pulled over on the highway so I could step out and be sick. I went home and lay in bed for seven hours. For five days afterward, I felt slightly off balance.
It was strange to be physically undone while your child stood nearby, composed and practical, asking if you need water.
I told him I wanted to try again – not to prove I could handle it. I didn’t want that to be our only shared flight. I read about motion sickness in small planes. Eat lightly, keep your eyes on the horizon.
A few weeks later, the second flight was steady. No manoeuvres. Just takeoff, a circuit, a landing and another. I made it through the entire flight and was proud of myself, though I didn’t say so.
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The dizziness lingered for a few days but less intensely. I may have reached my limit with two-seater aircraft. I told him I’ll wait until he’s flying something larger. He reminds me that bigger planes still move through the same air.
While the nausea has passed, the shift between us lingers. For years, I was the one managing risk, teaching him to drive, reminding him to slow down, calculating unseen dangers on his behalf. In that cockpit, he was the one scanning instruments and making decisions. My role was to trust him.
That transition arrives quietly. One day you are steadying their bicycle; the next you are trying not to interfere while they control an aircraft.
I am extremely proud of him. That part is uncomplicated. What is more complex is accepting that my authority in his life has narrowed. I can advise, ask questions, show up. But I am no longer setting the direction.
When we landed the second time and taxied back, I watched him move through his shutdown checklist – methodical, unhurried. For a moment, I saw the eight-year-old who once stood under a museum airplane wing and looked up. The difference is that now he is the one others will look to.
I’m sure I would still feel slightly unsteady in small planes. Perhaps I always will. But I will keep climbing into the seat next to him if he asks.
There is something clarifying about sitting beside your child while they take control of something vast and invisible. At some point, without ceremony, the roles change. You notice it only when you look over and realize the person guiding you safely back to earth is the one you once carried in your arms.
Jeffrey Morry lives in Winnipeg.