IFR In Silence... It's More Than Possible, It's Reality

by ANN Associate Editor Rob Finfrock

As many of our readers will likely agree, earning an instrument rating on your ticket is often a challenge, in and of itself. Not insurmountable, of course -- but a bit more difficult than "stepping-on-the-ball" and navigating to a lone VOR or two.

Now, imagine trying to accomplish this task if you couldn't hear -- could you do it? How would you be able to communicate with air traffic control, while also handling the workload of maintaining course and keeping the aircraft shiny-side up? Frankly, it sounds like an almost Herculean task.

Well, meet Hercules. He's Stephen Hopson (above, right), and last week he became the first deaf person to earn an IFR rating.

Hopson, 45, has been deaf since he was born. He is able to hear sounds -- but cannot distinguish words -- with help of a hearing aid, and he can also read lips and speak. Hopson had already earned his private pilot ticket -- something only a few hundred deaf pilots have been able to accomplish, out of over 600,000 active pilots -- as well as his commercial rating.

To fully understand the significance of earning an IFR rating when you're deaf, you need to start at the beginning -- when Hopson took his first training flight in a C-150.

VFR Training

"I still remember my first flight with my very first flight instructor," Hopson told Aero-News. "I still have a photo of us shaking hands after we landed. I was absolutely beaming! I felt like a real pilot."

Hopson's first instructor was Jason Barton, who told Aero-News from the start he was impressed with Hopson.

"I was running a small flight school, and used to get emails from prospective students," Barton said. "Stephen and I began emailing back and forth, and I was excited to recruit him as a student because his questions were intelligent and showed that he had already done a lot of research about learning to fly."

"Then I got a question I wasn't ready for... 'I'm deaf, does that matter?'" Barton said. "[But] it proved to be a minor issue -- one that we could easily work around at our non-towered field."

A device developed by CFI Greg Stockman helped the two men overcome the largest obstacle in Hopson's way. At the time, Hopson's hearing aids couldn't pick up the sound of voices coming in over his headset -- so while Hopson could broadcast his position in the blind, he had no way of detecting when another pilot was transmitting on frequency. He might have stepped on another pilot's transmission, and never known it.

Stockman's device gave Hopson a visual cue when the frequency was active -- and that was all he needed.

"Because of my ability to speak, I used the radio to self announce as I was coming into the pattern. Every once in a while I would also add that I was a deaf pilot (imagine everyone scattering at hearing that!)" Hopson writes.

Hopson also made several cross-country flights solo, including into controlled airports. He did so with prior permission and arrangements with the supervisor controller.

Hopson earned his private ticket in 2001 -- and in 2003, he added a commercial rating. He often flew solo -- but when he'd fly with a passenger ("mainly fun trips,  where I invited them to join me for lunch or breakfast") he'd utilize their ability to hear by asking them to monitor the radios -- a true case of cockpit resource management.

As you can see, flying solo while deaf is not an insurmountable task. But, that's flying VFR -- where two-way communications with ATC aren't required unless you're in controlled airspace, utilizing flight following, or at a towered field (Hopson cites there are only 700 controlled airports in the US, out of 11,000 total -- allowing deaf pilots to fly throughout the country without ever having to touch a radio.)

It's one thing to make prior arrangements with ATC for a (relatively) simple VFR flight; it's quite another to fly in the ever-dynamic world of instrument flight when you can't communicate with ATC. How did Hopson do it?

The answer is amazingly simple.

IFR Flight

To fly IFR, Hopson does need a copilot -- but only to listen for ATC communications to their airplane, which the copilot then writes down on a dry-erase board (using shorthand) so Hopson can see them and then transmit the instructions back to the controller. That's all. He is still pilot-in-command, solely responsible for flying the plane, working the radios and handling the charts.

Before he could demonstrate his ability to handle IFR, though, Hopson needed to receive the FAA's blessing to begin training -- as well as find a flight school willing to accept the challenge. (By this point, Barton hadn't been his instructor for some time.)

Fortunately, the FAA okayed the effort -- and Hopson found American Winds Flight Academy, a Part 141 school in based at Akron-Fulton International Airport (AKR).

"Chief pilot Denise Hobart and her husband, Mike Kolomichuk, were the driving force behind my latest accomplishments," Hopson said. "They invested in my dream and pushed me as much as they could."

As a result of his hard work and dedication to the endeavour, Hopson took his IFR oral exam and checkride (in a C-172SP) last Friday -- and passed with flying colors. He is now an instrument-rated pilot.

So, what's next for Stephen Hopson -- a former banker, who now works as a motivational speaker? His answer is much like it is for any newly-minted IFR pilot: he wants to learn more.

"I plan on building significant IFR experience over time," Hopson writes. "I will practice simulated approaches and with selected copilots and gradually build time confidence and experience in the simulated and actual IFR environments. I intend to stay current as well as go for my multi-engine and jet type ratings. The CFI [rating] is also a possibility."

"I plan to fly charter flights with American Winds after receiving a multi-engine," Hopson adds. "This will help me build time towards future flying endeavors." Eventually, Hopson writes, he would like to pilot a very-light jet to his speaking engagements, and other events.

For Hopson, the path to earning his IFR rating hasn't simply been one of personal accomplishment -- but of constantly working towards future goals, as well.

"As you can see, there are many different possibilities!" he writes.

FMI: www.sjhopson.com, www.faa.gov/pilots/become/deaf_pilot/, www.teachmetofly.com, www.deafpilots.org