Mark M: the strangest double-take I have ever had

The days after 9/11, those strange days, were full of angst and a heightened state of awareness, which took over the entire American psyche for months on end. As people digested the facts of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil ever, and as the American public stayed glued to their TV sets day and night, something very odd happened to me: I had an extraordinary double-take.

It happened as I was watching 60 Minutes, or was it 20/20, I can't recall with clarity. I was sitting with relatives and friends, and as I was about to switch TV channels, I suddenly recognised the man who was being interviewed on national TV. For a second I paused, my breathing went into pause mode, and until I could regain my focus, in a state of thorough disbelief, it dawned on me the man being interview was Mark Mikarts, the man who had taught me to fly a decade previously. Why was he on one of the most watched TV programs of the entire dial? I just could not believe what I was about to find out.

I learned to fly at the New England Fliers fixed base operator in 1992, at the Beverly Municipal airport, just north of Boston. Learning to fly was the culmination of many years of dreaming of becoming a pilot, flying simulators on my PC, and studying all I could about flying and flight theory on my own. Once my finances permitted it and I had a bit of free time away from the rigours of a medical residency, I showed up one day at the flight school in Beverly, Mass, and signed up for lessons. Mark Mikarts was assigned to me, a rookie flight instructor, with whom I went through ground school and flight training. We possibly spent up to 50 hours together in the cockpit of various PA-28 Piper Warriors, doing touch-and-goes, night flight, and cross-country flights up to Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Needless to say, I can count on those days as some of the happiest of my life. Flying had afforded me the fulfillment of a long held, very precious dream. As a child I had dreamt of flying and disclosed to my parents, in fact quite early, that I wanted to be a commercial airline pilot or even better, enroll in the Israeli Air Force. Those dreams, of pursuing a professional career in flying, relegated to the backburner as I discovered music and dove with my entire heart and soul into the world of piano. However, the desire to fly never faltered. Every now and then I took flying lessons and when I had enough resources - and time, because you need a lot of it to learn to fly - I took up the dream of flying seriously. 

Mark was a decent, upstanding, serious flight instructor. He was very good with ground school instruction and diligent with his prep and in-cockpit instruction. We spent many hours together. He was kind, enthusiastic and showed me all the tricks one has to learn before the first solo flight. Since he knew that I had flown gliders and had natural instincts, he signed-off my solo flight early on, I think that was around the 20th hour of dual flight.

The first solo flight is an experience one never forgets. Being alone in the cockpit, soaring the skies, responsible for the straight-and-level, for correct speed settings, engine performance, flight controls, take-off and landing configurations, is simply exhilarating. He told me that, at least from below - and he watched every move I made and listened to me on the tower radio frequency - I did just fine.

Minutes after completeing my first solo flight, Beverly municipal Airport, 1993.

Later on came the mandatory FAA examinations and I ultimately went on to earn my private, single-engine land flight certification. I eventually went on to own a single-engine plane,  a wonderful  Rockwell Commander 112, which I nicknamed “Juliet”, and which I flew many fantastic  hours in the Northeast of the USA. In fact I obtained my IFR License on "Juliet", N1383J, my beloved wide-body, rather slow, but just delightful Rockwell Commander. I have always loved the IFR environment and have Hal Spector - with whom I did my IFR Training -  to thank for not fearing flying in IMC, that is in the clouds. Hal was a skilled and self-assured pilot, very disciplined in the cockpit, and was thoroughly comfortable with IFR flying. It was too bad that he eventually had to spend time in jail for doing something completely foolish. 

Mark Mikarts and I, the day of my first solo flight.

After flying in Western Pennsylvania many years, I returned to Boston, took up flying at a variety of flight schools, I eventually had Children and flew less and less. I miss flying sorely.

In Penssylvania, around 1998, leaning against a Cessna 182R, which I flew back and forth to Teterboro, NJ and Western PA many times.

Back to Mark...and the double-take. The person who was being interviewed on national TV shortly after 9/11 was none other than Mark Mikarts. But why? It turned out, years after he had been a flight instructor in Boston, he apparently moved to Florida and became a flight instructor at a flight school in Venice, Florida. Why he never became a commercial airline pilot, I just do not know, and one can only speculate. I’ve always suspected though it might be a bit unusual for someone to remain a flight instructor without moving up in the career ladder.

Well, it was my good old flight instructor, Mark Mikarts, who eventually ended being assigned to and taught Mohamed Atta and Marwan Yousef Alshehhi to fly, the very ring leaders who organised the nuts and bolts of 9/11, the very terrorists who flew jetliners into the World Trade Center on that fateful day of 2001 that changed the course of American history. As the authors of a Wall Street Journal article said it well, "Those Who Unwittingly Aided Terrorists Are Left With Regret." I could only imagine how bad Mark felt upon suddenly being thrown in the spotlight of the hideous act. Suddenly conspiracy theories of all types emerged, including one which seemed to imply the CIA had been running flight schools in Florida and elsewhere secretly training the terrorists. Mark got implicated in this conspiracy theory, which as far as I am concerned is as preposterous as the thought that the Mossad covertly planned 9/11.

Mark apparently was asked again and again by a variety of journalists as to how he did not detect the dark intentions of his Saudi students. It was he, after all, who had almost glibly said, that he had not been able to understand why Atta and his accomplice "just wanted to learn to fly, but were not interested in taking off or landing". This statement apparently had its source in Mark's narrative and allegedly was a true fact. This statement got repeated a million times, written about, analysed again and again and became the source of fodder for the many conspiracy theories which seemed to implicate Mark Mikarts - and for good reasons. Why had he not alerted the authorities? Again, one can only speculate why Mark had been so naive. 

Then it dawned on me...I remembered, when he was teaching me to fly, Mark had often gotten lost in the air and had some difficulties dialing frequencies. I ended up reacting much faster to quick changes in flight conditions and felt a bit uncomfortable sometimes with his command of navigation. Perhaps, I hypothesised, Mark had suffered some sort of learning deficit, which had been the cause of his not being able to pursue a career as a commercial pilot, that he ended up teaching as a flight instructor (which by many is only seen as a stepping stone to bigger and better things) and why he could not read the clear messages being emitted by the disgusting men who planned 9/11. One can only imagine how he felt.

Mark and I never met again and I am sure, many years later, he has overcome all the negative publicity. But these events leave permanent marks in one's soul.

Hence my connection with 9/11, tenuous though it might be, it made me shudder.