The Fright of Flight

            God surely has a way of showing me his glory, majesty, creation, and saving power! On Thursday I was flying with my instructor and practicing approaches normally. We had marginal weather with cloud bases around 2000 feet and the tops around 3500 feet. We were popping in and out of the clouds around 3000 feet and were setting up for a hold over the NABB VOR (a specific point from where you start approaches into Clark County Airport (KJVY). I begin to start a turn to come back inbound to the VOR while we are flying through a cloud. I’m controlling the airplane by looking only at the instruments not outside. All of a sudden I see the instruments indicating that we are descending, slowly at first and then faster. I begin to try to fix the error but it was not working. I immediately said, “what’s going on?” My instructor quickly took the yoke and began to attempt to correct the plane’s attitude (the way the plane is oriented- nose down, nose up, turning, etc.) In the mean time I am looking up to see where we were but find that it is a vast whitish- gray sea of cloud. God surely provides safety in time of need because we soon popped out of the cloud in a small opening and could see that we were heading toward the ground. My instructor continued to work with the controls to get the plane under control. We leveled out around 2500 feet I think and then began to ascend back up to 3000 feet and regain our heading correctly.

Back at the hangar looking at the low clouds

            This was the scariest thing I’ve ever gone through because you could not see what was up or down until we popped out of the cloud. It was quite the lesson in trusting God that He will keep us safe and protects us when we are in need. I let my instructor fly the airplane for the next few minutes while I sat there stunned but regained myself. We radioed Louisville approach to tell them we were ready to begin our approach and then I went ahead and took the controls and flew the approach and then we continued back to Bowman field. After we got back to the hangar we talked about what happened and that you have to be careful in IFR weather conditions (cloudy/ marginal weather/ storms, etc.) because something could happen in a split second. We do not know exactly what caused us to go into an unusual attitude but it could have been a combination of a downdraft and turning. It was an interesting and scary way of applying what I learn in studying and training: that being unusual attitude recovery, emergency procedures, and weather phenomena. We did not declare an emergency because we were able to recover the plane before anything really bad happened. We also noticed that ATC (Louisville approach/ Air traffic control) did not contact us that we were below our altitude (which would immediately pop up on their screen as a warning) possibly because we were still above the published altitude for the hold or because they were busy with contacting several planes that were arriving. It was a humbling and eye opening experience that will surely help me when I am flying into the middle of nowhere as a missionary. It is a great lesson in trusting God to help us in our time of need.

Deuteronomy 31:6 “Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”

Jeremiah 29:11 ^“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare^[a] and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

God not only saves us from physical danger but from spiritual danger from being completely separated from Him and having to live eternally in Hell. God created everything perfect and in his image. He created us and the sky and the animals and nature and everything to be part of his kingdom. Yet sin came into the world and this caused a gap between us and our perfect God. However, Christ came into the world to save us from our sin and from the eternal judgment and took the judgment upon himself even though He was innocent just so that we as believers could come before God and be seen as righteous. In response to this we need to repent of our sin and believe in God and that Christ is the only way to God.

Fly with and trust in Christ for your salvation,

Helen

Sunset: God's wonderful creation!