Surfing the friendly skies

I may not be a great surfer (or even a very good one), but I share the same passion for the ocean as any great surfer. As a wise man once said, “The best surfer is the one having the most fun in the water,” and I believe this applies to any activity in life. I try to live by this ideal.

During one of my many surfing days in Papua, Indonesia, where I live, I was having the sort of difficulties you’d expect a not-very-good surfer to have. I was struggling to read the waves. I was trying to be conscious about where I stood on the board, how I placed my arms, and what my eyes were looking at. The whole process required a lot of awareness because there was so much to keep track of. And suddenly it hit me: This is a lot like flying.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that surfing and flying had more in common than just a high need for awareness.

Adapting to local conditions

In the type of challenging flying we do in Papua, most runways are short and unimproved. Some runways are curved with several different slopes and side slopes, embedded in unforgiving terrain. Some even create illusions that might lead to disaster if you try to land straight-in as if it were a normal airport. And the weather can be treacherous, especially in the mountains.

There are procedures in place that help pilots deal with these challenges, but nothing replaces experience and good judgment. In Papua, a day is never the same as the previous one, and adaptability is key to the success and safety of the flights.

The ocean shares the same dynamic. A surfer needs to adapt to the day’s conditions and understand his own limitations as well as those of his equipment. He needs to read the waves one by one and instinctively know which one to ride, and how he will approach it. Similarly, a pilot needs to read the weather and anticipate the conditions of the runway he’s landing on. At the same time, he must understand the aircraft’s limitations as much as his own, to have a clear picture of what the machine’s behavior will be.

Eyes on the prize

Expert surfers frequently say: “Wherever your eyes are looking, that’s where you’ll go.”

My flight instructors, back when they were guiding me through approach for landing, hammered into me that I had to focus on the line of the strip and lock my eyes on the aiming point.

These are two approaches to the same idea. Countless times when surfing, I fell forward on a board while trying to “pop up” and soon realized I was looking at the wave’s flats instead of locking my eyes down the line. This is especially important for any advanced surfing maneuvers. If you’re not looking at where you’re supposed to go, you won’t be able to explore that wave’s full potential, and you risk falling off your board and wasting a good ride.

Applying this same principle on approach to land in mountain operations, pilots who don’t focus on the right aiming point might end up too high or too flat, land too short, or float down the runway. Another mistake pilots often make in mountain runways or unimproved strips is failing to keep focus on the line of the strip, which might cause the aircraft to veer off the runway, especially in crosswind landings. Some runways in Papua have excessive crowns making them extremely hazardous if not landing right in the middle, especially when they are wet. Because of the absence of a painted center line, it can be tricky to visualize this reference, especially in curved runways. If the line of the strip is not established early on in the approach, and then kept for the remainder of the approach, the result is usually a landing off the center. The pilot should be cross-checking the aiming point with this imaginary reference by looking up and down the strip as many times as needed, ensuring alignment till the moment of flare. Only then should the pilot move his eyes up and focus on keeping that line all the way up the strip.

In surfing or flying, we must remind ourselves where to look until it becomes second nature. But this raises a new question: Why is it so difficult to keep our eyes where they should be? I think there are two big reasons: fear, and a lack of good training.

The importance of GOOD training

In both flying and surfing, training should come first. Awareness and knowledge transferred from instructor to student or from senior surf buddy to surf buddy are crucial for a successful outcome. For me, a smooth landing off the center line is as bad as a bounce on the center line. A good instructor will instill their student with discipline and a drive for perfection, to nurture good habits early on.

Everyone knows learning good practices from the beginning will contribute to good airmanship. Poor transfer of knowledge (or acceptance of poor student performance) will obviously be detrimental to any activity. If your landings are missing finesse as much as your surfing (or worse yet, missing finesse as much as my surfing), you should start thinking about where you’ve been placing your eyes. Knowing will enable you to perfect the art of surfing, or flying, or any number of other activities.

Don’t live in fear

Another factor that plays a huge role is fear. Fear creates what’s known as a “fight or flight” response (or, for pilots, sometimes a “fight in flight” response). No matter how much you’ve read and studied the theory behind an activity like flying or surfing, it cannot fully prepare you for the sensations of the actual experience. The sound of a wave, its towering size, a short runway, or a strong crosswind; all of these can be scary the first time we are exposed to them. And that’s when we’re likely to forget the theory we studied, as instinct takes over.No matter how much you’ve read and studied the theory behind an activity like flying or surfing, it cannot fully prepare you for the sensations of the actual experience.

Our survival instinct will tell our eyes to look at the immediate threat. On a steep wave, inexperienced surfers will tend to look straight down the wave, scared of falling off when seeing the wave picking them up. Inexperienced pilots can tend to flare high when seeing the ground rushing up during a landing. On mountain strip operations, inexperienced pilots (or no-recent-experience pilots) can be to be too low on sloped runways. They fail to keep their eyes locked on the aiming point of the runway, fail to assess the relative position of the aircraft to the beginning of the strip, and subsequently assume they are too high. The result is a flat and dangerous approach using lots of power, usually at the last portion of the landing, not leaving much room to abort.

Overcoming the fight or flight response takes years of practice, like any other activity. But hands-on training, along with experience and exposure to new situations, will help reduce the stress induced by our fight or flight response.

There are many similarities between flying and surfing. I am less skilled as a surfer, but that’s OK because it’s also much less problematic to jump off your surfboard amid a maneuver. Still, I believe that surfing made me a better pilot, and flying made me a better surfer.

Andre Pinto documents his flying adventures in Papua, Indonesia, on his YouTube channel “A Pilot’s Home.”