My 12-year-old son, Parker, has never driven a car.

He has not practiced on a rural road or even in an empty parking lot. I am not entirely sure I trust him to push a shopping cart through Costco.

Against my better judgement, I let him fly a plane… We survived.

The Airport for People Who Don’t Fly With Peasants

We live near John C. Tune Airport in Nashville, a small enclave of private planes, flight schools, and wealthy jet owners who consider BNA too crowded with Southwest passengers wearing neck pillows.

In an attempt to explore this local airport I took my daughter, Audrey, on a touristy helicopter flight around Nashville. She loved every second of it—the skyline, the river, the tiny cars below us—but was furious that the pilot refused to let her take control of the helicopter.

Audrey is eight. (She’s actually six, but she tells everyone she is eight.)

She spent most of the flight asking variations of, “When do I get to fly?” as though we had paid for an introductory Apache combat lesson.

Eventually, I got tired of the whining.

“Not until you’re ten,” I told her.

This satisfied her, which was unfortunate because I had just created a legally binding verbal contract with a child who remembers every promise I have ever made under duress.

I have no idea what I am going to do when Audrey turns ten and arrives at breakfast wearing aviator sunglasses and demanding access to the aircraft I apparently owe her.

Balancing the Children

Since I value parental fairness like Captain America – and because my children will fight to the death over any perceived imbalance in snacks, attention, or aviation experiences – I needed to plan a similar adventure for Parker.

Instead of another helicopter ride, I found Harmony Air, a flight school at Tune offering one-hour “discovery flights” over Nashville in a Cessna.

“Maybe they’ll even let you hold the joystick,” I told Parker. “Or the steering wheel. Whatever the hell pilots call it.”

It is called a yoke, a word pilots invented specifically to make dads feel stupid.

Our Pilot Was Almost Old Enough to Rent a Car

We arrived at the flight school on a perfect Friday afternoon. The sky was clear, the wind was calm, and there were no visible tornadoes moving toward Davidson County.

This was reassuring because buzzing around Nashville in a tiny plane with limited visibility and even less ability to withstand one of our increasingly biblical thunderstorms was not my preferred way to go out.

A young man named Ryan greeted us and said he would be our flight instructor.

Ryan looked young.

Very young.

Never-used-a-VHS-tape young. Never-made-a-phone-call-from-a-landline young. He looked like he could fly an airplane but might still need an adult to sign a permission slip for the field trip.

I did not ask Ryan his age because I am a Southern gentleman. Also, I was afraid of the answer.

Instead, Ryan volunteered some reassuring information.

“Parker is plenty old enough to fly,” he said. “I made my first solo flight when I was fifteen. But it took me a few more years to become an instructor.”

A few more years.

This technically answered my question while also confirming that Ryan could probably remember his high-school locker combination.

Despite his age, Ryan clearly knew what he was doing. He walked Parker through the preflight inspection of our designated Cessna, explaining the wings, fuel, tires, control surfaces, and various mechanical parts that I immediately forgot the names of.

The plane appeared to have been manufactured sometime during the Reagan administration.

“Would you consider this a nice plane?” I asked.

“Oh, God, no,” Ryan said.

This was not the answer I had been hoping for.

“These flight-instruction planes get beaten to hell,” he continued. “And they’re ancient.”

I stared at the aircraft that would soon carry my only son and me hundreds of feet above Tennessee.

Sensing my concern, Ryan quickly added, “But they have a ton of hours in the sky, so you know you can count on them.”

Our plane was the aviation equivalent of buying a 1987 Toyota Corolla with 400,000 miles.

“And there aren’t a bunch of expensive extras to break,” he said. “No fancy GPS systems or parachutes.”

I had not previously considered a parachute to be a troublesome luxury feature, but some of the newer planes now feature massive parachutes to support vehicle and passengers on their harrowing float to the earth.

Top Gun: Middle School

The inside of the Cessna was cramped. Parker and Ryan took the two seats up front while I folded myself into the back.

I barely fit.

I sat sideways with one shoulder pressed against the window and my knees arranged near my chin, looking less like a passenger and more like a body someone was attempting to transport across state lines.

Ryan started the engine and radioed the control tower. He pointed toward a painted line on the pavement.

“Keep her straight down this line,” he told Parker.

Parker took the controls and began steering us across the airport.

“That’s cool,” I thought. “He’s letting Parker taxi the plane… I hope this place has insurance.”

As we moved toward the runway, I stared at the collection of private jets parked nearby. There seemed to be more Gulfstreams than usual, each one priced somewhere between a hospital wing and a small Caribbean nation.

Ryan noticed me looking.

“Gavin Newsom is in town for a private fundraiser,” he said. “We don’t usually get this many Gulfstreams.”

I considered that if Parker lost control while taxiing, we could potentially cause an international incident.

We reached the runway.

I expected Ryan to take over.

Instead, he continued instructing Parker.

“Okay, push the throttle forward. Keep us pointed straight. We should lift off at around sixty-five knots.”

Wait.

My son had not yet driven through a McDonald’s, but Ryan had apparently decided he was ready to launch three human beings into the atmosphere.

“Should you do this part?” I asked Ryan.

“Nah,” he said. “Parker’s doing great. I’ll take over if he makes a mistake.”

This sounded reassuring until I began wondering how large a mistake had to be before Ryan intervened.

Was there some kind of official aviation mistake scale, with “minor course correction” at one end and “Netflix documentary” at the other?

Parker pushed the throttle forward.

The engine roared. The plane accelerated. I pressed myself into the rear seat and tried to look like a father who had complete confidence in his child.

At around sixty-five knots, the wheels left the runway.

Parker had taken off in a plane.

Somewhere Over Nashville

Once we were in the air, Ryan guided Parker through turns, climbs, and maintaining altitude.

Parker was alarmingly calm.

He listened to Ryan’s instructions, made small adjustments, and flew the plane as if this were a perfectly normal Friday-afternoon activity for a sixth grader.

Meanwhile, I was crouched in the back staring out the window and wondering why the ground still looked so close.

Were we supposed to be this low?

From the air, Nashville looked beautiful. The Cumberland River curved through the city, downtown reflected the late-afternoon sun, and all the roads below appeared blissfully free of traffic because we were too high to see the line of cars backed up on I-40.

Parker practiced a few 360-degree turns while holding our altitude.

I watched the wing dip toward the ground and tried to remember whether I had ever properly apologized to everyone I had wronged.

But Parker kept the plane smooth.

No sudden drops. No wild turns. No screaming passengers. Not even one attempted barrel roll.

He was, annoyingly, good at it.

As the sun began to set, Ryan asked him, “Which direction do you think we should go to get back to the airport?”

Parker looked around.

“Uh…that way?” he guessed, pointing in almost the exact opposite direction of John C. Tune.

Ryan handled the navigation.

Any Landing You Can Walk Away From

As we approached the airport, I realized that most of my anxiety had disappeared.

Not because landing a forty-year-old airplane piloted by my child had somehow become safe, but because I had used up my body’s entire supply of panic during takeoff.

There was nothing left.

Parker had flown for almost an hour without doing anything jarring or unexpected. He followed instructions. He kept the flight smooth. He had not sent us into restricted airspace or forced Ryan to wrestle away the controls.

Ryan cleared us for landing and then instructed Parker to bring our plane back to earth.

The wheels touched the runway.

No bounce. No screeching tires. No fire trucks.

It was almost disappointingly uneventful.

I briefly considered applauding, but I did not want to be that guy.

Parker taxied us back toward the flight school.

As we approached our parking spot, I noticed a newer-looking Cessna sitting nearby. Its nose rested sadly on the pavement, and its propeller was bent backward where it had struck the concrete.

“What happened to that one?” I asked.

“Oh, that?” Ryan said. “That’s our newer Cessna. Someone came in too hard during a flight lesson. The prop hit the ground and seized the engine.”

He looked at the wrecked plane.

“It’s a shame. That was a nice one. Almost a million dollars brand-new.”

This was the first time all afternoon that I felt grateful we had been assigned the beater plane.

Meh. ★★★☆☆

On the drive home, I peppered Parker with questions.

“What was taking off like?”

“Fine.”

“Were you nervous?”

“Not really.”

“What was the coolest part?”

“I don’t know. Flying, I guess.”

He answered with the same emotional intensity he brings to questions about school lunch.

I had just watched my twelve-year-old son pilot an airplane over Nashville. He had taken off, banked through the sky, and returned safely to the airport.

To Parker, the experience ranked somewhere between “pretty cool” and “Can we stop for Chipotle?”

This is parenting.

You spend weeks planning an unforgettable experience. You research companies, check the weather, entrust your child’s life to an instructor who looks like he recently finished driver’s ed, and wedge yourself into the back of an aircraft with no GPS, parachute, or detectable shock absorbers.

Then your child reviews the experience like a mediocre Amazon purchase.

Plane worked. No snacks. Three stars.

But later that night, I heard Parker telling Claire about the flight. He explained how he controlled the takeoff, how he made turns over Nashville, and how Ryan had shown him the instruments.

He sounded excited.

He just had not wanted me to know.

That is another part of being twelve. You can fly an airplane, but showing enthusiasm is embarrassing.

I am not sure Parker will remember every detail of that afternoon. He may forget the old Cessna, the Gulfstreams, the sunset, or the fact that he initially tried to fly us off into Kentucky.

But I will remember sitting helplessly in the back while my son flew us through the sky.

Which, now that I think about it, is probably a preview of the next six years of parenting.

And when Audrey turns ten and asks to fly the helicopter, I am denying this entire story ever happened.