Many in the family have heard the story, but I now have a little time (ahem!) to tell it in video and pictures. Will has actually never been on an airplane, and back in June, he got an impromptu introduction to flying. It wasn’t a standard commercial airplane. No — he was in the passenger seat in a two-seater flown out of the local Hanover County Airport.
The Cub Scout pack was down for a visit with someone who has an airplane at the airport, so they could see the inside of the plane, the hanger where it was stored, and a little about the airport. See the picture below for the pilot and airplane we visited (as we got published in the local town paper). But no flights were planned.
But before we got that tour, we discovered that the Young Eagles program was at the airport, offering free, short flights for kids older than 6 (sorry, Sean and Daniel — and they really wanted to go, too). After checking with Will if he wanted to do it, we signed the waivers and got him in line for a flight. And what a flight it was — wind direction made takeoffs to the north the right thing to do, so the flight plan was to head north toward Kings Dominion (about 10 miles away), then turn around and come land from the south. So Will, having been to Kings Dominion just 2 weeks earlier (and his first time there, too), was able to see the park from the air. Of course, he definitely liked seeing the Eiffel Tower.
This is the part where I get mad at myself. We had the camera with us, but I forgot to check battery strength. Oops! We got 1 picture on it before it completely died, so I went to my handy, much-lower-res cameraphone. Oh well, at least we have some pictures and videos. Which unfortunately means I get mad about something else — namely, I accidentally deleted (instead of saved) the video of Will’s plane landing. It was a very smooth landing (pilot was excellent) and I was next to the taxiway, so I was right there. But I messed up in clicking and buttons, and the video was gone. So, instead you just get the takeoff and the taxiing for final park.
So, Will got to be the co-pilot of the plane (he had to sit up front), and he got to see Kings Dominion from the air. That’s really cool. Here are some more pictures from the event at the airport. Sean and Daniel did get to sit in a parked airplane and check things out, so that definitely made them a little happier.
