For Christmas, Jenn bought me a gift certificate for a "Discovery Flight" with Wings Aloft at Boeing Field. It wasn't until now that I was able to take advantage of it.

I was planning to make the flight on a Sunday, but they had an opening of the Friday I had called, so I booked it. The weather would be better today than Sunday anyways. I surprised Cohen at the bus stop with the news as he would be going with me.

I met the pilot at Wings Aloft and got a tour of their facilities. Then it was off to check out the plane, do the preflight walk-around and then off to the air.

The plane was a Cessna 172, a stable plane with room for Cohen in the back.

The trainer was very friendly and knowledgable, and was happy to take me through everything he was doing. He let me do the preflight checklst. He did the initial taxi, but he let me perform the take off once he had the plane on the centerline.

The flight was fun, after we got up to our flight level of about 2000ft, he let me take the controls for most of the flight.


View Larger Map

Overall, the flying of the plane was fairly easy, the most intimidating part would be to communication with the towers; listening for our tail number and understanding the flow of data from ATIS.

The flight was fun, the flying bug is now firmly embedded in my brain, but in all reality, I won't likely be going up in the air again until the kids are in or finished with college. I just can't commit 2-3 lessons a week with everything else going on.