This has been sitting in my docs for exactly a year under the title “stupid freaking meta” cause it was a pain to write. But it’s been on my mind so I thought it was time for another post, based on my experience as a pilot and member of the aviation community.



As I was making this I realized that this might be some good fanfiction material for y’all, so enjoy. (Fyi: every pilot-related example or description I use in this post is a real life true story/situation that I have heard or experienced! Nothing made up.)

I began learning to fly at age 16, before I learned to drive. I got my pilot’s license at age 19 which was almost 6 years ago, and it’s safe to say I’m just a little obsessed. I spent years around pilots from all walks of life, and very quickly caught on to the fact that there are different types of pilots, but still a common thread that goes through everyone.

When I sat down one day in July 2016 and watched Voltron for the first time, I was immediately smitten. It was everything I loved: space, flying, technology, awesome characters, all rolled into one. Interestingly enough, I can pinpoint the EXACT SECOND I first fell in love with this show…

I literally paused the episode here and texted my friend about how I had found the new Big Thing in my life. This was it, this show knew us. As I continued watching I was thrilled to see each character be such a fabulous example of the different types of pilots and have a lot of deep threads I resonated with. I’m going to go through each main character and describe what “type” of pilot they fit and why. So buckle up folks, this post is Hella Long. First up,

Lance

It may be hard to believe, but I speak from experience when I say the vast majority of pilots are exactly like Lance. Even if your normal personality is not like his, he amplifies the traits that are inside every one of us. It doesn’t matter what your personality is like on the ground, your pilot personality can be a lot different,

Lance isn’t scared.

These are the kind of people who live for dives and stalls, pitching down the nose and laughing maniacally as the engine builds up to a whine and the ground fills the windshield. In order to get to this point, you have to be really comfortable with the aircraft, know what it can do and what it can’t. This kind of boils down to the first point about pilots in general that are illustrated nicely in the show:

Pilot thing #1: You have a healthy fear of what you should be afraid of, but you know you don’t have to be afraid of much.

Personally I have learned to fear only three things as a pilot: birds, fire, and myself (the ‘myself’ point we’ll come back to later when we talk about Shiro). Most everything else is a non-issue and might even be considered a thrill. This doesn’t mean we’re not cautious and responsible, but we’re not scared.

True, imidately following this scene, Lance crashed the simulator (which I also theorize he did on purpose), so it could be argued he’s not that great of a pilot, but the point still stands. He’s in training, we all did stupid stuff in training, I did stupid stuff in training. It’s the attitude we’re talking about here.

* Side dish for thought: I see a lot of the fandom throwing around the term ‘cargo pilot’ like it’s some sort of insult, or ‘oh that’s so boring and has no prestige whatsoever’ but let me set one thing straight: being a cargo pilot is the BOMB, and I would take that over being a fighter any day.

Flying a 180 ton aircraft filled with supplies or troops through canyons and around mountains, low enough to trim bushes and kick up sand, and the satisfaction of yelling “5 tons of toilet paper comin’ in hot!” into the comms is an end in itself. The poor grunts in the back are strapped in like sardines and trying not to hurl at your erratic maneuvers, but they don’t complain cause they know you have to stay low and move crazy to avoid enemy fire. You and your Thicc Baby are proud as anything when every load is delivered safely, whether its potatoes or tanks. (From what we see in Voltron it seems Lance didn’t want to be a cargo pilot, but I have to admit it would have fit him pretty well.)

#2 Talking to your aircraft

There is not a pilot on the face of the Earth that does not talk to their aircraft like it is a sentinent being, and treat it accordingly. No matter how big and tough we are, you can always catch us patting our ship with a dopey smile and gooey eyes, cooing “Hey Beautiful” or any other myriad of pet names. It’s a thing, everybody does it. I don’t pretend to know the psychology.

Keith

Ok story time.

A few years back, I took a nurse’s assistant course and worked in a elderly care home. It was an awful place. Elderly folks who had no family lived in small, dirty rooms, no longer able to care for themselves or sometimes even communicate. I knew everyone on the floor, and tried to show them love as much as possible in their often abusive situation.

One such person was a tall gangly man in his nineties. He was confined to a wheelchair, never made eye contact, and never spoke. Every mealtime we would take him into the cafeteria and sit with him, spoon-feeding because his hands shook too much to hold a utensil. We were encouraged to talk to him as much as we could, even though he never responded and none of us were sure just how mentally present he was.

One time I went into his room, I noticed something. On the rickety table at the end of his bed was a small, dusty photo frame. It held a picture of dashing young man in an Air Force uniform with sharp eyes and half-smirk, a curly-haired little girl in his arms. One of the nurses told me that was him and his daughter. Since we now had a little something in common, I decided to bring it up at the next mealtime.

“Sooo, I saw your picture on the end table,” I hedged, holding out a spoonful of potatoes. I didn’t expect a response, and sure enough, he remained staring at the table blankly.

“You were in the Air Force, huh? That’s pretty neat. I’m a pilot too, but I’ve haven’t flown anything very exciting.” I held the spoon to his mouth and he took it, swallowing slowly.

“P-38’s or P-51’s are my favorite,” I rambled, scraping together the creamed peas. “There’s something about the sound of that Merlin engine that can’t be beat!” I hummed and shook my head with nostalgia. The fighter planes from WW2 had always been my favorite. With the next bite ready, I turned back to him, and almost dropped the spoon in shock.

His head was lifted, back straight, staring at me with such intensity I almost thought he would leap out of the seat. My mouth hung open, spoon frozen midair, and for a moment I sat there in disbelief. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes, bright and fiery, overflowing with words he couldn’t speak. Finally, I recovered enough to smile, wishing I could hear what he wanted to say.

“I love flying,” I whispered, “There’s nothing like it, is there?” His eyes stayed locked on mine, and it was a long time before he could be coaxed into taking another mouthful.

Here’s where I’m going with this. Pilots like Keith are from an era that no longer exists. His are the type we can only find in the silent annals of history, like WW1 and 2. Pilots who were called “knights of the air,” unorthodox and brave in every sense of the word. Cutting out engines and making impossible maneuvers that pushed themselves and their aircraft to the limits and beyond. Split-second, all or nothing stunts that shouldn’t have worked but did, pilots that flew by pure instinct and blood running like fire through their veins. Pilots who couldn’t let go of the controls when they landed because they had been gripping them too hard, too long. Pilots who would wait till the very last second to bail out of a burning plane so they could direct it to crash into a target, pilots who coaxed their plane to finish a mission even though half of it was missing, oil was smearing over the canopy, and hydraulic fluid was dripping down their legs. Pilots that got into a new plane that had just been designed and no one knew what it could even do, and flew it anyway. Kamikaze pilots who put their plane into a dive toward a target, knowing it would be the last thing they ever did.

They fought a war, some of them won, and they all disappeared.

The nature of air war isn’t like that anymore–with the advent of supersonic jets and drones, the era of the fighter pilot is all but gone, and the gritty sword fights in the sky have become extinct. Even those who are fighter pilots today are given strict guidelines, and risks are reduced to a minimum.

Pilots like Keith don’t exist anymore because they are not born, they are only made under certain circumstances.

The closest you will get to those kind of pilots today are probably bush pilots, they’re pretty much the only ones left that push everything to the limits, fly with no rules, and rely on instinct. But for now, that spirit of Keith, that “you fight like a Galra,” drive, that extra sense and lion-heartedness…are only found in museums, in monuments, and in gravestones.

Shiro

Shiro is a classic fit to what we call a “Jet Jockey.” Responsible, hero-type, yet still a massive dork; the guy you’d see in charge of the Thunderbird demonstration team. He’s a leader, calm, charming, and fierce. It’s in the blood, in the way they walk and smile. When you hear the term ‘you got it or you don’t,” these people definitely “got it.”

They’re perfect, polished in the exterior, but what you sometimes will not notice is their vulnerability. Most all of them have lost close friends, hold some kind of loneliness or sadness in their chest, something that only the love of the air can soothe. Be nice to these guys. People like to put them on a pedestal, but they need human companionship to not let lost in the sky.

I’d like to take a moment here to share my insights from aviation relating to Shiro, namely, Pilot Error, and the Kerberos mission. I see a lot of content in the fandom of Keith and the Holts being outraged that anyone could suggest that the Kerberos crash was caused by pilot error. The typical response is along the lines of, “Shiro was the best, the brightest, most skilled and responsible student, he would NEVER make a mistake like that.”

That’s bullshit and every pilot knows it.

From our very first day in flight school, this concept was drilled into us until we could recite it in our sleep. Mistakes happen to everyone, no matter how good you are or how much experience you have. You think, “Oh I would never do that” or that just because so-and-so is legendary they can do no wrong. It happens every day and the best pilots are not immune. The vast majority of crashes are caused by errors by pilots who are not dummies. It’s the go-to answer when no one is quite sure what happened because it’s the most likely reason. It sobers the rest of us, thinking “that could easily be me,” but we don’t doubt it or get outraged cause we know it can happen to the best of us.

People are prone to make mistakes for no reason, when we know better. It just…didn’t even cross your mind at the time. You thought you were doing the right thing. It’s happened to me personally and I very nearly got killed, but it really opened my eyes to the whole issue.

Semi-related to this is a theory I’ve been toying with: that Shiro getting chosen to pilot the Kerberos mission was a controversial and even scandalous decision. Here’s the cold hard facts: There is no way Shiro was the most experienced pilot at the Garrison. Even if he was a prodigy and had insane natural talent, someone that young just does not have the experience that an older pilot that had been flying for years would have under his belt. Shiro was probably so good that some of the higher-ups at the Garrison wanted to assign him to Kerberos, but the other portion were against it, saying it wasn’t smart to be sending someone so inexperienced, no matter how good he was. When the Kerberos crew disappeared, it could easily have become a huge, maybe even public scandal, where the people who opposed the decision were crying “I told you so!” and citing what a mistake it was to assign someone so young.

The youngest astronaut NASA ever sent to space was 32 years old, and she certainly wasn’t in charge of anything at the time. The youngest person ever in space was a 25-year old Russian cosmonaut named Titov who was essentially strapped into a capsule and launched into orbit to test what happened to the human body in zero gravity for 24 hours (not pleasant, they found out). He was also the second human to go to space, when we knew pretty much nothing about anything. I can’t imagine the guts this guy had, knowing he was going up as an experiment. The whole story is worth checking out. Honestly this sounds more like something the Garrison would do, and the whole situation adds to the suspicion that something is fishy in the place.

Experience rules, I cannot emphasize this enough. It doesn’t matter how “good” you are or how fast you learn, the guy with more experience will always be better than you, no matter how old they are. For Shiro to be the most experienced at such a young age, all the other older pilots and instructors would have to be dead or medically disqualified, or something.

Short end of it is, there is no way Shiro was the best pilot at the Garrison, or the best choice for the mission. Even if he was a prodigy and at the top of his class, which I’m sure he was, that’s not what the higher-ups use to make a decision. Of course, this whole theory might be moot. The creators most likely put Shiro on the Kerberos mission for plot reasons only, but realistically is a little different story.

Hunk

Hunk’s category of pilots hold a special place in my heart: the mechanics. They probably otherwise would not be pilots, but it’s convenient to be able to fly the stuff when they’re running checks. Always covered in grease, their second home is in the hangar, tending to the planes like a kind doctor to a child with the flu. They listen to the aircraft. It’s more of a technical relationship, not quite as mystical as the other pilots tend to portray it. For the Hunk-type, it’s dissected into moving parts.

These folks are NICE. My best friend in training was a mechanic named Bob, who was a ray of sunshine and the sweetest guy absolutely ever. He was also HUMONGOUS, and it was always a kick to seem him squeezing into a tiny Cessna 150 with a squinty-eyed smile and a cheerful “Let’s see how she does!” He would never fly more than a few trips around the pattern.

“Nothing major,” he would say. “I’m not gonna do any crazy stuff like these guys,” *points thumb over shoulder at the Lance-like pilots drinking coffee* “Just little trip around the pattern so I can check out what I did without having to wait for another pilot to take ‘em up.”

They talk up a storm, they ramble. Mechanics tend to make fun of pilots for knowing nothing about how the airplane works, and have gut intuition like no one else. You LISTEN to these guys when they have a hunch or you. will. die.

Pidge

Pidge’s type of pilots are fun to be around. Curious, in the learning stage, usually teenagers, enthusiastic and eager, wanting to be a pilot for the intellectually stimulating reasons (“I read all the fighter manuals”).

I’m reminded of one of the students who was training at the same time I was. 5’4, short cropped hair, large aviator sunglasses, devouring the training books with quick wit and banter with the instructors. She also would roll up to the hanger in her sporty convertible right after getting her drivers license, blaring “Sexy Back” loud enough to shake the propellers off the nearest aircraft.

They may not have the ingrained, primal love for hardcore flying that pilots like Lance, Keith and Shiro have, but to them it’s cool and they love it for their own reasons. It’s a stepping stone to something greater, more knowledge, laid out before them like the rolling landscape far, far below.

Allura

When we’re sorting Voltron characters into pilot categories, Allura drops with a perfect little clink into the box marked Female Helicopter Pilots.

If you’re looking for folks that are Tough, who can catch grenades in their teeth while brandishing two sub-machine guns and walking through fire, you’ve come to the right place. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s got nothing on these women. Don’t cross them, they can most likely bench press their own helicopter. They instantly generate mad respect, you feel like bowing whenever they walk in a room.

Fixed-wing pilots and helicopter pilots are two very different breeds, and usually are very loyal to their respective aircrafts. Most airplane pilots wouldn’t be caught dead in a helicopter and vice versa. Of course there are exceptions, but the accepted culture is for the two groups to rib each other, kinda like cat people vs dog people.

These pilots have a beaming smile and deceptively sweet twinkle eyes. These are people who have whipped the butts of every obstacle given to mankind, stared death in the face and beat it with their bare fists. I might be exaggerating here, but this is the feeling one gets when coming across these women.

Coran

Oh Coran, you are one of the most iconic pilot types, and the one folks are most likely to encounter hanging around any small airport. The middle-aged-and-older folks that fly to to other cities for lunches, dubbed “$100 hamburgers.” They are chipper, wear shorts and Hawaiian shirts, and like to reminisce about the good old days. I am not exaggerating. Most of them are hobby flyers or retirees with eccentric senses of humor and very large amounts of money, maybe more than one plane and an antique car. If you start talking to one, be prepared to spend a while. They are a bottomless well of tall stories of glory, belly laughter, and that snark and slightly odd sense of humor that can turn dark if the right subject is brought up.

All together, pilots are a colorful bunch. Most everyone fits into these basic categories, but there’s a common thread through it all. Love, almost to addiction. Once we get in and taste the crisp air aloft, feel the vibration of the aircraft beneath our fingers, hear that ethereal voice speak to us. There’s no going back. It calls and calls and calls, and the farthest star is too close to hang our dreams.

Hope this has been helpful or interesting to someone. Please feel free to come by and talk to me about anything!