AlaskaAV
GONE WEST
Mission, TX
How many have flown with a brother and sister-in-law going into a hot and windy airport with the lady flying?
I had flown back to Nebraska from Alaska to visit my parents so my brother flew his Cherokee 6 from Auburn to Wichita, KS to pick me up. Perfect ride home as I sat right seat. He let me do some of the flying which was great for me. My sis in law might not have been all that happy though since she normally sat right seat.
Had a good time at home, got a lot of family work done and did some local flying just to have fun which for me was different since I normally only flew because of work in Alaska.
When it came time to go back to Alaska, they flew me back to Wichita to catch a TWA 707-320 to LAX. It was very hot and very windy and my sis in law was flying. Talk about white knuckle....Maybe the first and only time I was ever worried when flying. She was all over the place and made probably 5 very hard landings on one pass before the tower asked if she was having problems. How she kept the wing tips off the runway I will never know and what really worried me was that my brother didn't have backup control on the yoke. She was licensed but very few hours. Very quiet from the front seat but she finally got it planted for the last time and followed instructions to the TWA terminal to drop me off. It almost seemed like a joke to them. I immediately went to a bar and hadddd three doubbbbble scotches on iccccce. That helped enough to get me to the TWA counter to check in. I have described that flight before but in case you missed it, there were only 3 airline employees in first class and one revenue passenger in coach. The flight attendants invited that guy to come forward and we all sat round a half moon table, played games and cards, drank lots of booze, had a great meal and 6 beautiful ladies to sit and joke with. We all told the girls to forget about us and just have a fun flight for themselves for a change. Even the cockpit crew would come back every so often and joke with us about having so many FAs taking care of us. Talk about a fun trip and it sure made up for what I went through getting into Wichita. Had I not been so bashful, I might have even tried to get a date after we got to LAX. Very shy though and still am.
The last year my brother had the aircraft he only flew it 10 hours, mainly one flight from Nebraska to LAX and back. Weather was good and VFR for LAX but he ended up being number 49 to land among all the heavies. He tried to describe how scared that made him since he was not used to that amount of traffic and I could just picture what he went through. Thank God he had good weather. When he got home, he immediately sold the aircraft and has not flown since. It is still owned by the same person in Illinois according to online aircraft registry. It was one of the early 7 passenger models with the extra windows but only 265 hp, a big mistake really and should have been a 300. Just right for the president of the flying farmers of Nebraska at the time and with a daughter that was queen and all seven had to make all the meetings. He always enjoyed flying with another farm friend who flew a Comanche 250.
Gee, I should still be flying today. Where did I go wrong?
I had flown back to Nebraska from Alaska to visit my parents so my brother flew his Cherokee 6 from Auburn to Wichita, KS to pick me up. Perfect ride home as I sat right seat. He let me do some of the flying which was great for me. My sis in law might not have been all that happy though since she normally sat right seat.
Had a good time at home, got a lot of family work done and did some local flying just to have fun which for me was different since I normally only flew because of work in Alaska.
When it came time to go back to Alaska, they flew me back to Wichita to catch a TWA 707-320 to LAX. It was very hot and very windy and my sis in law was flying. Talk about white knuckle....Maybe the first and only time I was ever worried when flying. She was all over the place and made probably 5 very hard landings on one pass before the tower asked if she was having problems. How she kept the wing tips off the runway I will never know and what really worried me was that my brother didn't have backup control on the yoke. She was licensed but very few hours. Very quiet from the front seat but she finally got it planted for the last time and followed instructions to the TWA terminal to drop me off. It almost seemed like a joke to them. I immediately went to a bar and hadddd three doubbbbble scotches on iccccce. That helped enough to get me to the TWA counter to check in. I have described that flight before but in case you missed it, there were only 3 airline employees in first class and one revenue passenger in coach. The flight attendants invited that guy to come forward and we all sat round a half moon table, played games and cards, drank lots of booze, had a great meal and 6 beautiful ladies to sit and joke with. We all told the girls to forget about us and just have a fun flight for themselves for a change. Even the cockpit crew would come back every so often and joke with us about having so many FAs taking care of us. Talk about a fun trip and it sure made up for what I went through getting into Wichita. Had I not been so bashful, I might have even tried to get a date after we got to LAX. Very shy though and still am.
The last year my brother had the aircraft he only flew it 10 hours, mainly one flight from Nebraska to LAX and back. Weather was good and VFR for LAX but he ended up being number 49 to land among all the heavies. He tried to describe how scared that made him since he was not used to that amount of traffic and I could just picture what he went through. Thank God he had good weather. When he got home, he immediately sold the aircraft and has not flown since. It is still owned by the same person in Illinois according to online aircraft registry. It was one of the early 7 passenger models with the extra windows but only 265 hp, a big mistake really and should have been a 300. Just right for the president of the flying farmers of Nebraska at the time and with a daughter that was queen and all seven had to make all the meetings. He always enjoyed flying with another farm friend who flew a Comanche 250.
Gee, I should still be flying today. Where did I go wrong?
