A Busy Week

This week was quite busy with aviation related activities. I had another CFII ground session and we worked through teaching an instrument procedure to a new instrument student. Secondly, I had two training flights as a CFI with a student and finished off the week with flying at the Challenge Air event. I think I logged about 7 hours this week and it sort of felt like I was really flying for a living. In reality the hours I logged isn't even close to what a full time CFI or pilot for hire would log in a week, but I am starting to get a glimpse of what it would be like to be a full time pilot.

Challenge Air

Today I participated in one of the Challenge Air events in Everett, WA. (KPAE). Challenge air holds these events around the US, and they are held to give kids with special needs an opportunity to fly in an airplane. Along with 20+ other pilots, we were tasked to fly a child and family members on a short 15-20 minute flight. This was the third annual event and was held at the Castle and Cook hangar. There were 135 kids signed up for flights along with 100's of volunteers helping things go smoothly. The challenge Air folks setup all kinds of activities for the children as well as assigning each child to an airplane. The kids got to take a short ground school and then were given a boarding pass and after pilot/ground crew introductions, they and their family got to walk out on the tarmac via a red carpet and through a cheering crowd to their assigned airplane. At the completion of each flight, I got to sign a certificate commemorating their flight and pin a set of wings on each "pilot".

I flew 5 flights for the day and all of my passengers were flying for the first time. I let each one operate the controls at various points of the flight and the looks on their faces were priceless. It was interesting seeing each child's personality come out when they operated the flight controls, where control inputs ranged from hesitant (shy/timid) to almost full control deflection (kids with lots of energy). All of the families were so gracious and appreciative of everyone involved and I could tell that these flights meant so much to them and their children.

I think that just for a short time while the children and parents are flying above the Earth looking at the world go by from 2500', that these flights give the parents and the kids a brief diversion from all of the issues that come along with caring for a special needs child.

Altitude Bust?

I was recently on a United Airlines flight from KSEA to KDEN and discovered that channel 9 of the in flight audio has the cockpit communications between the crew and ATC. The in flight magazine says that the channel will be broadcast at the discretion of the captain. So, I dialed in and started listening prior to push back. After takeoff the flight was handed off to departure and the controller assigned the flight an altitude of 9000' feet. The pilot manning the radio acknowledged 9000'. After a few minutes I felt a sudden nose down motion and that rolling stomach feeling that you get when you suddenly stop climbing and apply heavy nose down pressure. I thought to myself, either there was a traffic conflict or the pilot just blew through his assigned altitude. Sure enough, one of the pilots called ATC and said something like "Approach, United xxx confirm altitude". The controller came back with "United xxx, descend and maintain 9000' ". I'm not going to pass judgement on the pilots seeing that I wasn't in the cockpit, but it's nice to know that even the pros make a mistake occasionally.