Fly Like an Eagle

Fly Like an Eagle
Nothing embodies freedom like a private plane.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Friday, July 28, 2000 12:01 a.m. EDT

PENN YAN, N.Y.--Out of the blue of the eastern sky, a two-seater yellow biplane touches down on a small runway next to a cornfield and taxis to a halt near a couple of lawn chairs. Out of the open cockpit steps Harold Middlebrook, 83 years old and just home from an air show. Mr. Middlebrook takes off his aviator's goggles, introduces himself by his longtime flying nickname, "Eagle," and joins his son, Paul, in explaining what makes flying one of the most American of pastimes.

"A sense of freedom," says Paul, also a pilot. He pats the fabric-covered wing of his father's Stearman biplane--used to train pilots during World War II--and adds, "You can climb in this airplane today, in the United States, with no radio, just like you could go in your car. If you want to go to California, you can do it." Paul, who more than 30 years ago flew helicopters in Vietnam, now runs an executive flight service for a living, and in much of his spare time--what else?--flies for fun. Flying, he says, is "like a disease, I think it's in my blood."

"Fortunately," adds his dad, "it's contagious."

Welcome to the Penn Yan Flying Club, one of many such private aviation outfits sprinkled across small-town America. Far in spirit from the confines of today's heavily regulated commercial jets queuing for takeoff, these are realms in which some folks still make airfields out of a patch of farmland and a windsock. For private pilots, America's skies are not so different from the nation's vast network of back roads--places that, once you get clear of big cities, are pretty much open to wander where you will. They're a sort of airborne spinoff of the old don't-fence-me-in cowboy tradition.

Founded more than 60 years ago in the basement of a barn, the Penn Yan Flying Club has about 160 members. They're "mostly average working stiffs," as one pilot says, drawn from the nearby countryside and a town of about 6,000 people. The original red barn still serves as the club's headquarters, furnished with worn sofas, armchairs and a wall clock mounted on a propeller. Magazines about flying and navigational charts clutter the tables. Parked in hangars just across a grassy field are the club's seven small planes, for rent to the members, many of whom drop by to take a spin aloft about as casually as most folks hop in the car and head for a picnic.

In fact, for this crowd, a favorite pastime is picnic-going--by plane. On this warm summer Saturday, Paul and his wife have just returned from a dawn excursion by seaplane to the Adirondack Mountains, where they breakfasted with some fellow pilots on sausage and eggs and made the 70-minute flight home before lunch.

After a plunge in popularity during the 1980s, private flying is again on the rise, fueled by the booming economy and helped by federal legislation that in 1994 reduced the threat of lawsuits against those who fly small aircraft. Private airtime nationwide still falls short of the 43 million hours aloft a year pilots logged in the late 1970s. But in the past few years, private flight hours have soared some 15% from the low of 23 million hours where they bottomed out in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Private flying came in for a lot of knocks after last summer's death of John F. Kennedy Jr. But seasoned fliers tend to regard it as akin to driving a car, at least if approached with the proper respect. "Probably the most important training a young pilot can have is knowing when not to push things," says 60-year-old David Shaw, co-owner of Harold Middlebrook's vintage biplane. After Mr. Middlebrook's touchdown, Mr. Shaw has quickly refueled the little plane at the club's gas pump and is about to give a lesson to a teenage student pilot sitting in the rear seat.

To explain just how open America still feels from the air, Paul Middlebrook points to like Japan and Vietnam. In Tokyo landing fees reach $10,000, in contrast to $35 to $180 at most major U.S. airports and no charge at all in many small towns such as Penn Yan. And a Vietnamese official explained to Mr. Middlebrook at a recent aviation conference that in his country it can take up to five weeks to get permission to land anywhere.

Mr. Middlebrook's wife, Nancy, a grade-school teacher who also holds a pilot's license, says that flying brings a lot of perspective on freedom. "You might say there's a lot of problems with the government here, but once you've traveled overseas, you realize it's a great place to live."

Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.