Forty years ago, on a hot summer day, an engine went silent—an engine engineered by the best brains money could buy. The Lycoming O-235 was inside a 1979 Piper Tomahawk being flown by my brother, Clay Thomas. He was only 300 feet off the ground when it quit, but he managed to glide the small plane just over the trees and set it down gently on a highway in South Georgia. The landing was so soft that the owner of a small home didn’t hear him roll silently into his driveway. The man simply continued enjoying his coffee until he got a knock on the door.

The following is a slightly over-the-top interview between two brothers about that event.

Stacey “The Kid” Thomas is a private pilot and the interviewer. (Stacey Alexander is a pen name I use because certain groups are after me. Yes, I’ve ordered medication.)

Captain Clay Thomas is the interviewee. He holds a commercial pilot license, ATP rating, instrument single-engine land, multi-engine land, and a jet endorsement.

(There was never much sibling rivalry between us when it came to aviation—obviously.)

---

Stacey: Okay, what company were you flying for and what were you doing for them back in those days?

Clay: I was flying for Chattanooga Jet Center, which was run by Johnny Flewellen. They had secured the US Sprint contract to patrol the nation’s first fiber optic network.

Stacey: What was your mission?

Clay: Looking for digging, train derailments, or any other dangerous unauthorized work along the CSX railroad tracks, which paralleled the US Sprint fiber optic line. If the line was severed, it cost a million dollars to repair—or a million dollars in lost earnings, plus the repair.

Stacey: So that was pretty low-level flying?

Clay: Yes, it was a low-level patrol run.

Stacey: How much were they paying you per hour?

Clay: Five bucks an hour.

Stacey: Wow, you were really banking it there, Rockefeller.

Stacey: I recall you being about 300 feet above the ground, flying over the pipelines, when the engine quit. What was the first thing that came out of your mouth?

Clay: “Mayday, mayday!”

Stacey: I think I would’ve said something else. I always used more colorful language than you.

Stacey: Did you actually make a Mayday call?

Clay: I said, “I’m going down on US 301, nine miles north of Folkston, Georgia,” but the only person who heard it was a captain with American Airlines flying overhead. He replied, “Good luck, and we’ll let Jacksonville Approach know.”

He later radioed back and said, “nice landing—good job.”

Stacey: Do you think that job was more dangerous than wing-walking?

Clay: Probably.

Stacey: Okay brother, be honest—did you really run it out of gas?

Clay: No.

Stacey: I know you’re a natural flyboy—but I guess your heart rate jumped a little when that engine quit? Or did you stay cool as ice like I would have?

Clay: That’s the first thing I thought: What would the Kid do?

Stacey: To be honest, I never argued that point much—that you were a natural-born flyer—after seeing you shoot down those planes in that Fighter Pilot arcade game at the incline back when I was 13. I must’ve pumped eight bucks of quarters into that machine. I couldn’t hit a thing, but you could track them down and blow them up. That game was hard.

Clay: I remember you struggling with that game.

Stacey: Did you use full flaps?

Clay: Yes.

Stacey: Did you open the doors?

Clay: No.

Stacey: Did you kill the master switch?

Clay: Nope.

Stacey: Hmmm... did you have a pilot’s license at the time?

Clay: Ha.

Stacey: Did you bounce the landing?

Clay: No, I greased it on.

Stacey: I recall it being some kind of carburetor problem. That’s why the engine quit?

Clay: Yes. The carburetor was junk.

Stacey: Did you lose your job?

Clay: No.

Stacey: Did they give you a pay raise?

Clay: No.

Stacey: I bet you thought it was Mom’s happiest day of her life?

Clay: Maybe?

Stacey: Nope. The happiest day of her life was when I got my pilot’s license. She said she was so proud that two of her three boys were pilots. She was an airplane nut. She loved to hop a jet. She should’ve been a stewardess. There’s no way she could’ve been a pilot—she could barely drive a car. You know how many wrecks she had on Broad Street?

Clay: You’re going off the rails again. Stick to the story, Kid.

Stacey: Were those Piper Tomahawks fun to fly? How was the range?

Clay: They were fun. It was a short-legged plane—469-mile range at 100 mph cruise speed.

Stacey: I bet it would glide forever with those long, skinny wings. Did it have a good glide ratio?

Clay: No, not really, I think it was an 8 to 1 ratio. (8 feet forward to 1 foot drop, engine out at 70 miles an hour)

Stacey: So just good enough to help clear those last pine trees just before you reached US 301?

Clay: Yup. There wasn’t much clearance between me, a lookout tower, and some pine trees.

Stacey: I recall you being pretty worn out after eight hours in that little plane, flying all over the Southeast every day.

Clay: Absolutely beat.

Stacey: Now brother, what have you been doing for the last 25 years, besides giving me a hard time?

Clay: I’ve been flying a Falcon 20 jet for IFL Group. But now I’m retired.

Stacey: That’s good that you retired. You’re getting old. What kind of flying were you doing?

Clay: The hardest type.

Stacey: And why do you say that? Because you were a freight dog, right?

Clay: Yup. Nighttime, daytime—it had to be there regardless of weather or holidays. Freight flying is considered the hardest job in the industry. The hours are brutal, you’re away from home a lot, and the coffee at the FBOs is terrible.

Stacey: But you loved every minute of it, didn’t you?

Clay: It was just a paycheck.

Stacey: Ha. It wasn’t much of one when you started.

Clay: Right, but it did improve.

Stacey: I seriously think you would’ve done the job for free your whole life if they’d asked. Pushing those throttles forward on a jet has got to be a good feeling.

Clay: It is.

Stacey: You’ve loved every minute of it, because you were meant to fly from day one. There’s only one person I know who can out-fly you. Do you know who that is?

Clay: The Kid.