Route Aberdeen – Insch – Cullen - Fraserburgh – Peterhead – Aberdeen; time taken 1:05 mins
Mum and Dad do not like flying and have flown on commercial airliners only on rare occasions. My interest in aviation was piqued as a child living in Lincolnshire – Bomber County – where we were surrounded by both disused Second World War bomber stations as well as active airfields and with the RAF College at Cranwell only 5 miles from home and a former 617 squadron Lancaster crew member as a next door neighbour. What 11 year old would not have been interested in aviation. So in spite of my parent’s dislike of flying I joined the local Air training Corps Squadron, built model aeroplanes and went to every possible airshow before getting a Private Pilot’s Licence at 17 (via and RAF Scholarship). I joined the RAF at 19 but unfortunately was unable to progress in a flying career and converted to become what was then known as a Fighter Controller.
A couple of years ago I renewed by PPL and promised to take Mum and Dad up. Dad flatly refused but Mum agreed to come (more trough a desire to be seen to be supporting her son than from any desire to fly). I had planned to take her up a year ago but she was saved by thick fog at Aberdeen airport but last Sunday she was unable to get away when the day dawned brightly and the wind was still. So it was off to Aberdeen and after a quick pre-flight I helped mum strap into the passenger seat on ZV. As we lined up on the runway for take off I could see that mum was gripping the seat sides with white knuckled fingers and was extremely quiet. As ATC gave take off clearance the throttle was applied and we trundled along the runway at 500 ft we turned towards Inverurie with Mum still looking uncomfortable.
As cloud was now coming in from the West I stopped our climb at 1500 ft and flew over my house pointing out various features on the ground to Mum – who had relaxed a little as I had given her something to hold other than the seat. Heavy rain was evident along my planned route to Ben Rinnes so we turned north for the coast and flew along to Cullen Bay then to Fraserburgh. By now Mum was saying she was enjoying herself though did keep asking ‘when are we going back to Aberdeen?’ Well eventually we re-joined the Aberdeen Zone via the Peterhead lane though with more and more cloud building up (we would get a very active downpour only 30 minutes after landing) we had to get lower and lower to stay below cloud eventually getting down to 1000ft to re-join the Aberdeen circuit. With a clearance to land swiftly coming we were down on the tarmac with a soft landing only 1 hour and 5 minutes after take-off. Mum said she had enjoyed the flight, though I suspect she was enjoying being back on the ground more. Dad has banned her from coming again but at least she has been up now so can cross it off any bucket list she might have.
No comments:
Post a Comment