Yesterday I had the privilege to hop along with our CEO in a Lancair Columbia 300 airplane. Together with two fellow co-workers we made a very fun trip from Lelystad Airpoirt to Eelde (doing an instrument approach) and then flying back – on visual navigation – to Lelystad Airport via the city where I work: Purmerend. The weather was pretty nice, although we had some low clouds and overcast on the way to Eelde. However on our way back we flew towards clear skies and enjoyed the whole experience.
Man, there is nothing cooler than seeing our own country from above. It’s so interesting to see the way we build here in Holland: you can see the layout of our cities and how we keep expanding. Up north you will see it’s mostly agricultural (farm land for cows and other crops).
One of the fun things was that I could keep track of our full flight my MyTracks from Google. Using the GPS on my new Samsung Galaxy i9000, I was able to track almost 100% of the first part of our trip and about 98% of the second part (follow the links to see them).
Anyway: it was a great experience: you don’t get this kind of chances very often – at least not me. Our CEO is a great pilot: both landings were so smooth that I did not even feel we touched down!
What is even nicer is that during the whole flight you can see everything that is going on as well. Try that in a commercial airplane. You never see the cockpit anymore (thanks to 9/11) or the pilots actually doing their work, flying the plane. In fact, given the circumstances I feel that flying has lost almost all of its ‘magic’ and has become more and more equivalent to taking public transport – with all the annoying things that go with doing so.
Anyway: here is a (long, 15 minute) video about our whole experience (enjoy):