AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2017 - 34

PILOT BRIEFING
YOU CAN FLY

The thrill is back
Returning to the left seat
B Y J I L L W. TA L L M A N

MARY FLAKE is, at this writing, laid up with
a broken knee. She can't wait to get her surgery and recuperation out of the way, because
Flake wants-no, needs-to get back in the air.
Flake, 84, recently returned to the left
seat, renewing a love affair with aviation that
began when she was 15 years old.
Flake earned a pilot certificate in 1949
and attended aeronautical classes at San
Bernadino Valley College. "When we wrote
to the airlines to enter their flight schools, all
the boys were encouraged but they were not
accepting women into their flying program. That's the way it
was in those days and I accepted it," she said.
Flake married "a fine young fireman" named David, and they
raised two sons and a daughter as she earned a real estate broker's license. In 1974 she bought a brand-new Piper Archer. She
used it to travel for business and to earn an instrument rating.
In 1984 Flake sold her airplane so that she and her husband
could retire to live on a sailboat. David died in 2002, and Mary
remarried. She became a widow again in 2013.
Six months later Flake began volunteering at April Field
Air Museum in Moreno Valley, California. The museum had a
Fairchild PT-19 that had been a trainer in World War II. What's
more, Flake had flown it in 1949. Volunteering at the museum,
Flake discovered "I was bit by that ole' flying bug again."
She found an instructor and started flying in a Cessna
172, but she missed her Piper. She found another CFI with
a Cherokee. Even so, she estimated it took about 30 hours to
get her landings to where she wanted them-although her
flight instructor said they were fine. She renewed her third
class medical certificate. Her aviation medical examiner said
her health was so good he would have issued her a five-year
certificate if he could have.
Flake bought another Archer, hoping that she could
find some partners. A student pilot offered to buy in. Robert
Gregory earned his pilot certificate in the airplane, which they
keep at French Valley (F70) in Murrieta, California. He's now
hard at work on an instrument rating, and the two enjoy flying together, swapping legs as pilot in command.
Flake had already been signed off to fly as PIC, yet she
attended a Rusty Pilots seminar at French Valley. She reads
AOPA publications, watches webinars, and devours the weekly
Pilot Workshops tips, which she shares with Gregory.
Rusty pilots need to be patient with their progress, "particularly if they're up there in years," Flake said. "I never once

34 | AOPA PILOT April 2017

got impatient enough that I wanted to quit. I couldn't figure
out why I wasn't feeling the airplane."
It may take you a little longer than you anticipated to reacquire those skills, but you won't mind once you're back in the
air. Just ask Mary Flake.
EMAIL jill.tallman@aopa.org

WEB

www.aopa.org/rustypilots

You
Can
Fly
AOPA makes getting back into the air easier. Rusty
Pilots seminars, of which AOPA plans to host more
than 250 of this year, provide a fun, interactive ground
school session designed to refresh pilot knowledge
of critical topics such as airspace, airport operations,
weather, and flight planning. The seminars, which are
free to AOPA members, are open to all pilots and fulfill
the FAA's flight review requirement for ground instruction. AOPA expects to see 7,500 attendees at Rusty
Pilots seminars in 2017. Rusty Pilots is part of AOPA's
You Can Fly initiatives designed get people flying and
keep them flying. These initiatives support flying clubs,
get lapsed pilots back into the air, encourage best
practices in flight training, help high school students
prepare for careers in aviation and aerospace, and bring
AOPA's resources and expertise to pilot groups across
the country. Together, these programs are moving the
needle when it comes to creating a vibrant and growing
general aviation community.

http://www.aopa.org/rustypilots

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2017