Rotorua aero club secretary, Jason Smalls speaks about how becoming a pilot later in life was part of his rehabilitation after a serious head injury.
A Rotorua man with a lifelong ambition to fly above the clouds thought the ship had sailed on his dream after a severe brain injury in 2019.
Jason Small, the secretary of Rotorua Aero Club, said he suffered axonal shearing on the temporal lobe and trauma to the fourth cranial nerve after a mountainbike accident.
“The thing about brain damage is you don’t know any different as you think you’re still the same person and it’s everyone around you who is being weird,” said Small.
Fatigue plagued him and he’d have to nap up to three times a day. He also experienced a poor sense of balance, an inability to regulate emotions, double vision and sensitivity to sound.
“Loud noises were like razor blades tearing through my head, I used to wear noise-cancelling headphones often because it was seriously the worst pain you could imagine hearing loud sounds,” Small said.
Small admits that at the time he was not the same stable, rational person he had been before the accident. He recalled checking himself out of the hospital three times because he believed there was nothing wrong with him.
Jason Smalls says flying isn’t a hobby, it’s a way of life. Photo / Andrew Warner
“This is the weird thing - not being able to remember who you were before the injury because to you, you are the same person. My family was left with a not-very-nice version and that was traumatic for everyone else except for me,” Small said.
Small said not being able to see the faces of his loved ones was the hardest part about his injury.
“I had a newborn son at the time, and I wasn’t able to see his face or the faces of the people who I loved, the same way,” Small said.
Small was committed to getting better.
He attended physio three times a week, kept regular appointments with brain and eye specialists, and worked with a psychologist to help set goals for himself. He credits regular sessions with Dave Keightly-Phillips for helping him and said, in his opinion, he’s “one of the best psychologists we have here in the Bay of Plenty”.
Small said learning to fly was a large part of his rehabilitation but he started with smaller steps.
He was determined to work on everything in order to be a safe and competent person who could drive a car again. Once he achieved that goal, Small set his next to fly an airplane and follow a long-forgotten dream.
When he was young, he always wanted to be a pilot but didn’t think he could.
“I was always told by people who I considered friends at the time that I would never be a pilot because I wore glasses and needed qualifications I could never achieve. So being this poor demoralised kid, my priorities changed, and I took a different path,” Small said.
That path led him to move from England to New Zealand in 1986, and from Auckland to the Bay of Plenty about 11 years ago.
He didn’t let the naysayers have the final word.
“I set a goal that I previously considered unachievable and one of the realisations was that life is an opportunity that you’re only given once and to make the most of it.
With unwavering encouragement from his wife, he took steps toward learning to fly. Small’s first lessons were at another flying school in the Bay of Plenty as Rotorua didn’t have any training facilities. He said the flight instructor was strict but fair and he learned a lot.
From there, Small connected with the Rotorua Aero Club about two years ago.
He tries to get in the air as often as he can and said the club has been a supportive network. He encourages others to come down and try it out.
Although Small knows he “won’t ever be an airline captain”, he flies because it is a passion and a way to feel alive.
“There is nothing that comes close to having the freedom of a bird. I wouldn’t call it a hobby, it is a way of life - of living that dream,” Small said.
The club is hosting a barbecue Christmas party on Saturday afternoon at their clubrooms, with a special 40-minute trial flight available for $180 for anyone wanting to have a go.
