The wonder of learning to fly

We’d taken off smoothly and the two-seater Cessna 152 was climbing through 1,000 feet on full power. Then my instructor, Gill, reached over and closed the throttle. As the plane’s nose began to sink, she told me calmly, ‘We’ll simulate an emergency now. Can you find a suitable field to land in?’ Hurrying panic wouldn’t look good, I felt. On the other hand, finding somewhere more or less immediately might be appreciated. An empty-looking golf course fairway below looked promising. It had two sand bunkers, probably easier to avoid with a plane than a golf club, but what if previously unseen golfers pulling buggies strolled out of the trees into my flight path on touchdown? A lush-looking green field to the right looked big, firm and long enough. No people or animals. Not ploughed. Ploughed is a real no-no when it comes to landing aeroplanes.

‘OK, I think we’d walk away from landing there,’ said Gill, pushing the throttle back to full power.