Artful Flying begins in the mind of the pilot, long before he or she sits down in the cockpit. It is more philosophy than procedure, more art than craft, more attitude than aptitude. It is more about human understanding than the challenges or faults of our systems or machinery.

There is outer work in flying, involving the hands, feet and body; we practice that crosswind landing until it feels good to our hands and behind; we shoot that ILS approach until it is second nature, until the procedure is burned indelibly into our short term memory. But there is inner work in flying, too, involving the head, our thinking musclesthe original software. This inner work is what we do the leastand need the most. For years, weve heard that about 70% of our flying accidents are due to human failures. This tells us that with few exceptions, our machines and avionics are pretty reliable; the systems that support us mostly serve our needs. What we need to concentrate on, then...is us. This is admittedly more difficult, which explains why were less likely to tryand less likely to make rapid or readily measurable progress when we do.

Artful Flying is largely a process of new awareness, yet its a process that is very old. Native American and Asian civilizations discovered this awareness thousands of years ago. But only recently have we discovered the importance and application of these simple, ancient ways in our lives.

-- Forward by Rod Machado

About the Author
Michael Maya Charles is a student of music, writing, eastern philosophy and, of course, flying. With over 20,000 hours and 200 aircraft types flown, he still searches for Beginner's Mind on every flight. An aviation writer and photographer for over 30 years, his writing has appeared in the pages of FLYING magazine, AOPA Pilot, and online at avweb.com. He flies an MD-11 for a major airline to feed his family, a Cub and Cessna 185 to feed his soul.

Hard Cover
332 pages

Publisher
Artful Publishing (2005)