What’s your favorite flight? Air Facts blogger John Zimmerman tackles that question after hearing “It was the best hour in my logbook” from a very experienced pilot he knows, after telling the moving story of the last flight he took with his father, just weeks before his death. “I thought it was a wonderful way to emphasize just how powerful this particular trip was: Every hour has a story to tell, but some live forever in our memories,” John goes on to say, then describes his best hour, which you can read here.
What’s your best hour? Favorite flight? Most memorable flight? Comment below.
It wasn’t my “best” log book entry, but it was my “most memorable”. Saturday, May 2, 1970 about 9:00 PM. I was on a night flight in a Cessna 172 “Flying Flashes” Flying Club airplane at Kent State University’s airport. While flying, a friend flying with me, noticed a fire burning on the Kent State University campus. So I descended down for a closer look. It was the ROTC building on campus engulfed in flames surrounded by fire trucks and students. As it turns out, this was the beginning of an infamous week at Kent State culminating in the killing of four students by National Guardsmen on May 4, 1970. The note in my logbook states “ROTC building on fire”. I was a Senior at Kent State and Graduated with a BS degree in Aerspace in June 1970.
June 8th, 2014.
I went out and flew some spins in my aircraft – putting into practice what I had learned doing upset training during the week. Then I flew a Young Eagle Flight. It was the end of the day and weekend and a great week of flying.
One of the things that kicked me into starting pilot training was that back in 2010 four friends or clients checked in with the “Big C”. Three were no longer with us. The fourth – who was only given 6 months to live was still with us 45 months later. Though as we both knew she was nearing the end of her road – trialing new drugs and treatments and living her life to the full. She had always turned down the chance of a flight – perhaps because she knew what had inspired me to learn to fly and perhaps part of her defense mechanism to try and live with her condition. Then a few days before she expressed a desire to go flying. We had a week of solid CAVU forecast and I told her I would drop everything to take her flying when she was ready.
We had been trying to fly all week – but her need for sleep, dehydration, managing her pain medication and general debilitation meant she couldn’t make it. I was tying my plane down at the end of the day with poor weather forecast for the next few days She called. I threw my plane keys at the ramp rat helping me and told him to untie the plane and preflight her for me. I drove over to my friend’s house to pick her up. Back to the plane and put her in the left seat (best view for the flight I was proposing) and then off around the islands and beaches she had sailed and kayaked and swam and surfed over the years. She was an inspiration to start flight training and we both shared some time and shed a tear – flying over the waters she loved. After a couple of weeks in which she had lost 25lbs and the morphine had become a daily need – we got out in the fresh air and out in the wild blue yonder and for a glorious 90 mins forgot about the travails on the surface……
We landed, took pictures and I took her home. As I made up my logbook that night I discovered I was logging hour number 1,000. A very special hour.
(My friend died a few days later – brave lady to the end).
The line that says “PIC: 1.0 – Type: North American P-51 Mustang.”