Then he had her pull the throttle back, ease the nose just below the horizon, and they descended together down to traffic pattern altitude.
The lady alongside looked back at him from her airplane.
Two machines nearly touching in the air, yet nothing he could do would fly her airplane for her. All he had was words.
“Almost home,” he told her. “Maria, you're doing a mighty fine piece of flying. Just turn toward me a bit, for about ten seconds or so, then roll back level.”
She pressed the microphone button but didn't say anything. The airplane banked to the right.
“You're doin’ fine. I'm going to talk to the control tower on another radio. Don't worry, I'll be listening on this radio, too. You can talk to me any time you want, OK?”
She nodded.
He switched the number two com radio to Cheyenne's frequency, called the control tower. “Hi Cheyenne, this is Cessna 2461 Echo.” The aircraft number was painted on the side of her airplane. No need to give them his own.
“Six One Echo, go ahead.”
“Six One Echo's a flight of two, eight miles north for landing.”
“Roger Six One Echo. Call entering the left downwind for Runway Niner.”
“Wilco,” he said. Funny word: it means I will comply. “And Six One Echo's a Cessna 182, pilot's incapacitated. The passenger's flying the airplane, I'm flying alongside, helping her out.”
There was a silence. “Say again, Six One Echo? The pilot's what?”
“Pilot's unconscious. Passenger's flying the airplane.”
“Roger. You're cleared to land any runway. Are you declaring an emergency?”
“Negative. We'll take Runway Niner. She's doing fine, but it wouldn't hurt to roll an ambulance for the pilot, and a fire truck. Keep the vehicles behind the landing aircraft, will you? We don't want to distract her, equipment driving alongside when she's touching down.”
“Roger, we'll roll the equipment and keep it behind the aircraft. Break: All aircraft in the Cheyenne area depart the airport traffic pattern please, we have an emergency in progress.”
“She's on unicom, Tower, two-two-eight. I'll be talking to her that frequency but listening yours.”
“Roger, Six One Echo. Good luck.”
“Not required. She's doing fine.”
He switched the transmitter back to unicom.
“There's the airport way out to your left, Maria,” he said. “We're going to do a big gentle turn to line up with the runway. Real smooth, no hurry. This is easy for you.”
They flew a huge landing pattern, mild slow turns, the instructor talking her through.
“Right about here, you can ease the throttle back, let the nose come down just below the horizon like we did before, a nice easy descent. The airplane loves this.”
She nodded. If this man is chattering away about airplanes loving things, then it probably isn't all that dangerous, what we're doing.
“If we don't like this approach,” he said, “we can climb up and do approaches all day long, if we want. This one's lookin’ just fine, though. You're doin’ great.” He didn't ask how much fuel she had remaining.
The two aircraft gentled left onto final approach, the runway lining up ahead, wide concrete two miles long.
“What we're gonna do is touch down real smooth, we're gonna put one wheel on each side of that big white line down the center of the runway. Lookin’ good, Captain. Add just a little power, throttle
forward about half an inch . . .”
She was responding well, now, and calm.