Before beginning my first flight lesson, I talked to two guys I knew from work. One is a direct coworker that works at my company, the other is a colleague I do business with indirectly, who works for a local government organization. Each of these men are private pilots. One hasn’t flown in quite some years but the other is an active private pilot who flies regularly. I had many conversations with each of these guys as they were able to help answer some of my questions about flying and the processes to become a pilot. With all of that said, they of course, kept up with my progress throughout my training. Brian, one of the guys I had been talking to, would call me every month or so just to check in and see how training was progressing. Fast forward to the day I passed my checkride and officially became a pilot, these two gentlemen were amongst the first to know. They expressed their congrats and Brian wanted to fly with me right away. While he did fly regularly, he hadn’t flown in about a year and wanted someone to fly with him who was fresh from training to act as a safety pilot and second set of eyes – without having to pay an instructor their hourly rate.
Within about a week or so of me passing my test, our schedules aligned and we planned an evening flight. Brian’s home airport is about a 10 or 15 minute flight away from mine so we planned that I would fly solo to his airport, pick him up, and we would do a cross-country flight. I chose Rutherford County airport as our destination. This was far enough away from our departure airport that I could log the flight as cross-country time and the airport was also at the beginning of the mountains. While I would not have been particularly comfortable flying “deep” into mountainous terrain with such little experience of mountain flying, this airport was at the “feet” of the mountains. It was in close enough proximity to the mountains that we could experience some great views of the mountains, yet didn’t have to contend with rugged terrain or potential density altitude issues. I arrived at KUZA, taxied to the FBO and picked Brian up.
We taxied out and took off. We did this on a Tuesday evening in June around 6:00 or so, so we had plenty of daylight, yet were experiencing the “Golden Hour” part of the sun’s presence. Brian handled all of the radio communications as we called positions at the non-towered airport, as well as flight-following with CLT Approach. We reached our cruising altitude, turned to our heading, and made our way roughly 60 miles west. The flight was uneventful as we cruised through smooth air with little-to-bumps. This was, however, around the time that the Canadian wildfires were in full effect, so we did have quite some hazy views. We never had limit visibility to be dangerous for VFR flight, but did see some significant haze in certain areas and altitude along our route. As we got closer we canceled flight following and descended. We entered the pattern, made a smooth landing (my humble brag) and taxied back. We had no real reasons for the flight except for the simple act of flying! We departed again and headed back to our origin airport. I did see some cooler sights along the way back to include the “better views” of the Appalachian Mountains and small towns along the way. Once landing back at KUZA I dropped Brian off, and took the short 15-minute flight back to my home airport. I shutdown, secured the plane, and logged the time in my logbook (PIC time for everything, and XC time for the portion with Brian).
All of this post is to say that while aviation is exciting in multiple ways, including reaching destinations in a much more fun and quicker way than driving, it’s not always about the destination. Sometimes it’s just as fun to simply be in the air. The ground distance we covered that night from the time I left my origin airport, made the leg with Brian, and returned home, would have taken around 3.5-4 hours by car, yet I was able to experience the flight, views, and good conversation with Brian all in a matter of about an hour and a half. Considering the position of where I live, the mountains has always seemed super far away. They aren’t close enough to make a day trip to and from comfortably, yet the power of general aviation in a single, piston-engine plane is very easily achievable.
