We may be flying above the clouds, but there’s no tray table, drink cart, or flight attendant in sight. The pilot isn’t wearing a uniform and I didn’t watch a flight safety demonstration before takeoff. There aren’t brochures for the airline, a rewards system, or a fasten seatbelt sign in the plane at all.
We’re level at 9,000 feet in the air and I hear the pilot over the radio.
“Hey, we might hit some turbulence up ahead.” It’s my dad, giving us the heads up as we begin to enter a cloud. The sky turns white ahead of us.
Dad’s sitting left seat, piloting a small Beechcraft Baron, with one of his pilot buddies in the copilot seat, helping with the radios. I’m sitting in the backseat, facing forward and trying to figure out if we’re in Virginia or North Carolina.
Dad’s adventures as a pilot began when I was a sophomore in high school and my dad got his private pilots license. He began studying and flying in January, flew from California to Virginia in March, and by April, he had earned his license and was already studying for the next level of his license, which would certify him to fly in the clouds.
By March of my junior year, he had gotten his instrumental license and we flew across the country, doing the epic college tour of 2016. Dad flew our family out to Columbia, Missouri; Austin, Texas, and Nashville, Tennessee during spring break to knock out college tours at Mizzou and the University of Texas at Austin. It was an incredible experience, where we watched the land turn from the coast to the midwest, noticing the lines where the mountains turned into cornfields from 8,000 feet up. Along the way, we made fuel stops in Kentucky on the Whiskey Trail, in windy Oklahoma, and in Arkansas.
Flying with my dad brings a new view to traveling. When planning trips, dad now looks for private airports to land at, and tells us “we can land here!” He finds a way to travel faster than by car, taking my family to family reunions, college tours, and to and from Chapel Hill.
After a few years, it all becomes second nature, plugging in headphones to block out the sound of the propellers, making sure to bring a sweatshirt because it gets colder during the flight, counting up to 80 knots during takeoff, and listening to the radios to make sure we hear when air traffic control is calling us.
When I’m not flying with him, I make sure to track him, plugging in his tail number on FlightAware and watching his flight, checking to see if he’s been diverted, where he’s going, or if he’s landed. He texts me about his flights, sending photos of the plane or a selfie from his flight, when he was in the sky, telling me about a plane he saw fly by him, or letting me know that he’s landed safely.
When your dad is your pilot, you become more laid back about air travel, and you know that you’re in good hands.
