Letting Go Saved My Life

Have you ever held on to something you know deep down you should let go? As a student pilot in my early thirties, letting go saved my life. Read on to find out how, and what you can learn from it.

It was a typical Southern California day in June of 1990. A few minutes earlier, I had taken off from Van Nuys Airport on my third solo flight in a two-seater Cessna 150. Below me, the hills around Simi Valley shimmered a golden brown in the desert sun, a beautiful sight to behold.

It was over Simi Valley that I would practice one of the most dangerous flight maneuvers: an approach to landing stall recovery. As the name suggests, this maneuver is practiced at a high altitude to make sure there is room for recovery if anything goes wrong.

“Burbank Approach,” I said into the radio, “this is Cessna One Five Zero Golf Sierra. I am a student pilot and will practice approach to landing stall recovery over Simi Valley at twenty-five hundred feet. Please advise of any approaching air-craft.”

I knew exactly what to do, having practiced this maneuver many times with Paul, my flight instructor. But this time was different. I was all by myself, with no flight instructor to take the controls if something went wrong. I could not make any mistakes. With sweaty palms, I prepared the maneuver. After rocking the plane to make sure there are no other aircraft under me or near me, I pulled the control wheel to reduce the air speed. To maintain altitude, I pushed in the throttle a little; then, to simulate a landing approach, I lowered the flaps – first fifteen degrees, then thirty and, finally, forty-five degrees. I maintained a straight and level flight, pulling the wheel closer and closer towards me. The air speed was getting down towards the stall speed of forty-two knots in landing configuration and the stall warning horn went off. Now the plane felt very unstable. In order to practice a quick recovery, I pulled the wheel even closer to further reduce the air speed, stalling the plane. Everything was going according to plan.

At this point I was expecting the nose to drop, but – what is this? – the left wing dropped before the right wing did. My heart was in my stomach as I realized I had inadvertently gotten myself into a downward spiral, also known as “the graveyard spiral.” Before me, the ground was spinning like a disk. The hand on the altimeter kept turning, showing the rapid descent. The air-speed indicator had rapidly climbed from forty-two knots to one hundred-twenty knots. The realization that these will be the last few seconds of my life flashed through my mind.

Then my survival instinct kicked in. I immediately pulled the throttle to avoid additional downward acceleration by the engine, then pulled in the flaps to protect them from bending or breaking at this high speed. But nothing I do had any effect. A thought to call the tower to ask for help was quickly dismissed; there was simply not enough time.

To live through this would take a miracle...

And with that thought, I took my hands off the wheel and my feet off the pedals, and cried out, “God take this plane!!”

In an instant, the plane got out of the downward spiral and into a straight and level flight. A look at the altimeter told me that within seconds I had gone from twenty-five hundred feet down to fifteen hundred feet above the ground. I just dropped one thousand feet! I knew that had I held onto the controls any longer I would have run myself right into the ground. I had to let go of the controls completely and let God take over. He was the only one who could get me out of this life-threatening situation, and He did.

Today, I look back on this terrifying experience as the biggest blessing of my life. And while this is (hopefully) a more drastic wakeup call than most people receive, its lesson, I believe, is applicable to any situation in which we need to let go of something. When we try to control situations, we often make them worse. When we let God take over, miracles happen. We should see God, not as a copilot to be called upon only in times of distress, but our captain, all the time.