I've been compulsively reading trip reports and daydreaming of Idaho and Alaska as you guys get to live it daily. I'm a rookie pilot compared to you guys with around 100 hours and maybe 65 or 70 of that being TW. But, I have a young family - wife of 4 or so years and a 1 year old little girl. Between travel for work and obligations at our ranch my free time is pretty slim - that and my wife has yet to commit to getting into a GA airplane as she is already scared to death of flying from her commercial experiences.

How do I make time to get out to some of the cool places you guys fly daily and/or make it a family trip? Any of you have significant others that are/were apprehensive of flying?

Or, do I just hope I live long enough to have more free time and grown kids?

Big thing is getting your wife to come with you. Mine enjoys the small plane a lot more then a big one. My daughter (just over 2) already has a lot of flight time and really enjoys it as well. Being able to take the family allows me to fly a lot more because it's a family excersize.
FWIW, my wife had never been in a small plane before she met me. Take the first flight easy and make sure it's a nice calm day. Hopefully yours will get used to it, it really is a great hobby.

David

All comes down to making it a priority. With a family and a demanding job, something has to give. I work in the oil field, so there have been periods (years) that I worked out of state or country. When you get back from work, the family needs their time. That said, even when working 90 hours a week in a crunch, or 70 hours consistently for years...there are still 168 hours in a week. I've found that most guys can still find time for other things if they look in the mirror; fishing, hunting, shooting, beer drinking, watching sports (big one in our part of the world).

For me, I ditched (or sidelined) all the other stuff. No more football watching on Saturday or Sunday unless it was a night game. My free time is at the airport. Some of my friends that had been historically connected at the hip with "their team" on Saturday tailgates...done. I know people that have let their A&M season tickets go away and sold their ranch or ditched their deer lease. Priorities.

After a few years of flying, my wife understood how important is was to me and naturally wanted to be a part of it. Now, my 9 year old son gets sad if Dad doesn't take him flying for breakfast. My thought is once you carve the time out, get a starter plane, you can quickly start building the experience needed to charge off to a destination.

I know of a few wife's that did not want to fly until the kids grew up. Several things to think about. She is going to worry about the baby the entire time you are in the air!! Go with another couple or two. Make first trips short flights early in the morning. Make sure she has a good time. Don't go somewhere you have not been so you look stupid when you can't find the runway Once you have a plane most of the other toys rust.
DENNNY

As far as time goes, that's on you. You either make time or you don't. There's always a way, unless you're in prison I guess.

To get her flying, make the flight just the means of transportation to a place SHE wants to go. Maybe it's a cool place to go shopping, spa, golf, whatever. Make it about her. Unless she is a total home body, which is fine too, this carrot will work 9 times out of 10. If she has control issues, put her in control. Show her the sectional, make her in charge of managing landmarks. Have her fly the airplane. Make her feel important to the process.

If she just totally doesn't dig it, that's OK too. Everyone needs their own thing to do, sometimes flying is a way to keep your own identity in a relationship.

Anyone else who needs couples counseling, Im here until 5:00. Hahahahahahaha!

I'll just echo what has been already said. Find the right carrot after getting her up on the most perfect day you can choose. Once she's gone some place in an hour that takes 3 hours to drive, hopefully she'll at least see the convenience if she doesn't enjoy it. Get her involved. Dee likes following along on the map. I've got FF loaded on her iPad not only as a backup, but so she has a map too.

Early on we had a talk where I told her that she had full veto power, short of it being absolutely necessary and I could explain why. Once she's a willing participant, make sure she's always comfortable with what your doing. We've had long talks about what she doesn't care for and I save those types of ops for when I'm by myself or with friends.

I'm lucky to have a wife who not only enjoys it but always knew it would be a part of our lives, and is willing to do long trips with the whole family. (Alaska this summer!)

One last thing about balance. For me, I found it was really important that she has as much "her" time as I have "me" time. And I always try to take at least one kid with me to reduce how many she is herding while I'm off playing. She knows I need my flying time just like she needs her running time. So it works well.

Good luck!


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My wife will not get in the plane with me. it's not rational, and it's not going to change. I'm saddened by this - and make extra time for family outside aviation - which means I don't fly as much as I'd like if my whole family was "all-in". My son will fly with me - but he's not terribly interested and I won't force him. I hope we can take more trips together. My wife has offered compromises to haul our RV on trips while I fly - which is all right by me. I'm trying to combine it with other family friendly activities like fly fishing and biking.

I was a barely minted private pilot (<100hrs) when I rented a 172 with wheel pants to make my first trip to Johnson Creek. Go slow and be conservative - hopefully take someone with your your first time in. But the only way to experience it is to do it. Take small bites and make smart choices. Get your life insurance in order and trade off what you need to get the time to experience the backcountry flying experience. It's fantastic. Maybe someday you can share it with your family. Adjust your priorities to make it happen - and it will.

Some good advice in this thread. I'd say take your time and definitely don't push anything. Go out on your own and get some good experience and then figure out fun short flights that you can go on together. A local flight to get breakfast on a smooth day, etc. If that works well, then go from there.

On the Idaho front, I had some pretty decent experience before I went there, but I still wouldn't bring my family the first time. I did the McCall seminar first, and then did an additional Idaho trip on my own before I brought my family. That may be more preparation than some pilots need, but it was definitely nice to feel confident flying in there before I brought my family.

Once I had a lot more experience and had flown with my family all over the place, we finally did the big Alaska trip. It's an amazing experience, but a lot of flying to get up there. You really want some family trips under your belt before tackling that one. With good preparation our trip went off without a hitch.

Take your time, and Good luck!

One thing to keep in mind concerning your apprehensive wife is that small plane flying in the back country has very little in common with commercial aviation of the type your wife is bothered by. Just because she is uncomfortable flying commercially does not mean she will not enjoy sitting in the right seat of a small plane. The two experiences don't compare. So.....she might actually enjoy small plane flying with you. The trick is to get her to agree to give it a try and then give her a positive experience.

I would say in her case that it is a must to give her that first experience on one of those dead still air days when the sun is just coming up. There's just nothing quite like leaving the ground with absolutely no wind or updrafts of any kind. If you can get her to agree to give it a try, and you pick the right morning, I can almost guarantee you will see a smile come across her face as you float over the hills and valleys in smooth air.

After you see that smile, trim the plane and see if she would like to feel the controls, and watch that smile turn into a jaw dropping expression of joy. Don't force, and make sure it's a dead calm morning or evening that first time.

Having said all that, there are some folks that simply will not take to GA flying. For whatever reason they simply will not even consider it. Zero interest. People like myself are the lucky ones. I have one of those wives who are open to trying just about anything. She absolutely trusts me. I make sure it stays that way. If she becomes uncomfortable, I do something about it. When she is in the right seat I always tell her that at any time we can make a change in our plans, and to just let me know.

I hope it all works out for you. Fly camping is a wonderful experience that very few get to take part in. Our absolute favorite summer activity is to fill the plane with camping gear and head over to Idaho and do some camping out of our plane. It's hard to explain to the non-flying public the satisfaction of heading cross country with your camping gear and floating down onto some out of the way grass field with a few other likeminded souls already lined up on the tree line, then setting up your camp site under the wing of your plane.

I will qualify this whole piece with acknowledging that I was not able to do this activity until my kids were pretty much grown.

Good luck, and hope to see you out there sometime.

Thanks for all the input, once this thing gets out of annual I'm going to try and see if she'll leave our little one and jump in for a short hop around my ranch strip - guess we'll see and go from there.

Lots of good comments here, but keep in mind that all spouses are not the same. Note that I said that in a gender neutral way, because it's true. I met a lady at OSH several years ago who is the pilot in the family--the bug really caught her, and not her husband. He flies with her, but he's basically the steward along for the ride, digging snackies out of the cooler--he has no interest in becoming a pilot. They fly a 182.

Another couple I know well are both pilots, but she's the real pilot in the family--he hardly stays current, but he makes a good autopilot when she needs to look more closely at a chart. Their over-equipped Arrow has all the bells and whistles one might want in a small GA airplane, and she knows how to use all of it. She's almost fanatical about flying--he'd rather watch.

I've been through the marriage/divorce ringer 3 times, and current SO has been my bestest companion for coming up on 15 years; I'll get to her flying disinterest in a moment.

Wife 1 soloed while we were still in Alaska, shortly after I received my private. She enjoyed flying, but she wasn't interested in pursuing a certificate. We traveled all over the country in our 182 and later the TR182 for many years, 2 adults, 2 small kids, large dog, and a parakeet. The kids were 2 and 6 when we first started flying as a family. She made an outstanding auto-pilot, able to hold heading and altitude as well as anyone.

Wife 2 took the AOPA Pinch-Hitter course, but beyond occasionally holding the controls, she wasn't interested in learning how to fly--but over our 10 years of marriage, we did a lot of traveling around the country with our respective kids, principally in the 231 that I flew for a friend, and occasionally in various rentals and borrowed airplanes. We first met when I picked up her and her then 4 year old daughter at KAPA (now Centennial, then Arapaho County) on a date arranged by her sister, who worked for me.

Wife 3 was only marginally interested in flying, and in our short marriage, she only flew with me half a dozen times. Had we stayed married, I suspect we would have traveled by GA now and then, as she seemed to have no objection to doing so.

Now to current SO. She was really reluctant for me to buy my airplane, as her very limited experience in small airplanes was watching them with her Dad at the local airport where she grew up, and one very unpleasant flight in a SE charter from Denver to Fort Collins when she and her husband first came to Fort Collins when he was transferred here by the company he worked for. But when she saw how much I loved to fly, she agreed to ride with me occasionally. Our first flight was just before my airplane's engine cratered and I landed in a field, and that neither I nor the airplane were hurt was a positive. But subsequent flights weren't particularly interesting for her, and the coup de grace occurred on a flight to Nebraska, when to get into Holdrege, it was necessary to shoot an approach--and although it was a picture-perfect approach, that experience of going through a few thousand feet of clouds scared her so much that she wanted us to drive the rental car home instead of fly home. I persuaded her to fly home, but that was the last time she flew in my airplane.

So it's very hard to tell how your wife will be. She may find that she really enjoys it, or she may decide that you'll do all the aviating in the family. You can bend her toward flying by being very careful, taking no chances, and starting out on a nice smooth day, but obviously that's no guarantee. I wish you well.

Cary

TxAgfisher,

Not to worry, you're doing it right. If you're compulsively reading and scheming how to get in some backcountry flying, either in the West, Canada, or AK it's going to happen. You're in. A couple thoughts:

-Based on my '40ish' years of flying in the places you would like to go and simultaneously trying to (stay) married, no need to push it too hard. If your wife really doesn't have the appetite for flight that's pretty common, and when the time comes to strap it on she'll let you know. Step by step; get involved in it some yourself and get some experience under your belt and then you can maybe move on to sharing it with others. You'll be better set to pick the time/aircraft and place/conditions so its a fun experience, but it might be a while.

-The time to do it is now. Ease into it, be very conservative with winds, distance, and initial strips you choose to fly into. Some of the strips you likely have seen are actually quite long, fairly smooth, and have good approaches. Fine, that's a start. But when you throw in altitude (even higher then Texas !), local winds, loading, those are things you need to get used to. As time goes on you can make it as challenging as you like. Any way you want to play it; but start out easy.

-Come on out to any of the areas that have a lot of backcountry flying going on, with or without your plane. Visit with the pilots, maybe get a little dual into a couple strips, talk with the people. Go fishing, make connections. Chill out. So many of the very experienced pilots love nothing better then sharing their experiences, maybe some time in their bird, some coffee, and other insights. McCall or Salmon ID, Hamilton, Stevensville, Missoula Montana. Salmon ID, there are many places where we launch into the wilderness. Alaska, many places.

One thing's for sure, you will have fun.

TxA:

I have four kids all older now. Two really enjoy it and two have no use for it. My wife puts up with it but doesn't love it.

Everyone is different and not everyone will like it.

All good advice about picking times and venues that will enhance first experience and also about starting in small bites at first.

But I will also add one thing I have found about backcountry flying and I suspect that it will apply with you as well. Using your plane as the family SUV can actually be a time saver.

For example, there is an airstrip in Gila National Forest called Me Own. If I were to drive to that strip, it would be a five hours one way. It is 40 minutes by plane. A few years back, a few of us flew to Me Own, made the 4 mile mountain bike ride to the Black Canyon drainage (good fishing), rode back to the planes and I was back at my house in time for an afternoon soccer match.

The same with the San Juan River. It is a very long day trip if I drive (4 hours driving each way), but is only an hour flight away.

Good luck!! Some of my best memories are trips with the kids to Oshkosh and backcountry NM strips. They still have fond memories as well.

Regards, L

I started out by dating a pilot. She was a captain at the same airline as I was working for. Once we got serious, our first overnight trip together was 3 days at smiley creek camping out of my dads 185 with me and my lab. If she didn't like that, I would have sent her packing. Fortunately for me, she loved it. We camp with our kids out of my 185 and my jeep all summer. We fly together like a crew. I'm incredibly lucky.

AEROPOD wrote:.....our first overnight trip together was 3 days at smiley creek camping out of my dads 185 with me and my lab. If she didn't like that, I would have sent her packing......

She probably said the same thing about you!!

.
...Happy wife...Happy Life...

I'm not sure if I read that in an Aviation Journal, Gleim Manual, FAA AC or what ?

Some of these have been particularly entertaining! The airplane is at an uncontrolled field now where I depart from pavement but land in a 700' area of grass at the end of the runway. My ranch strip is 1000' but not very smooth - smoother coming than going though. Will try and get her to fly from the airport to our place - only about 10 minutes and go from there...

Will have PIREP when it happens...

AEROPOD wrote:I started out by dating a pilot. She was a captain at the same airline as I was working for. Once we got serious, our first overnight trip together was 3 days at smiley creek camping out of my dads 185 with me and my lab. If she didn't like that, I would have sent her packing. Fortunately for me, she loved it. We camp with our kids out of my 185 and my jeep all summer. We fly together like a crew. I'm incredibly lucky.

And I thought I was lucky. Well, I am...but your wife is a commercial pilot, and she loves fly camping too? And you own a 185? Good grief!

whynotfly wrote:And I thought I was lucky. Well, I am...but your wife is a commercial pilot, and she loves fly camping too? And you own a 185? Good grief!

I shopped for years, and did a very thorough pre-buy inspection.

AEROPOD wrote:

whynotfly wrote:And I thought I was lucky. Well, I am...but your wife is a commercial pilot, and she loves fly camping too? And you own a 185? Good grief!

I shopped for years, and did a very thorough pre-buy inspection.

Airplane or ???

Cary