It’s nice to have a friend who has a license to fly a plane. Since the beginning of the year, my friend, Matt, and I have been trying to organize a brief flight tour around Vancouver, but every time we tried, I had an exam to study for, or a project to finish. When we were both available, the weather didn’t cooperate. This time we almost couldn’t fly either, but the weather cleared up enough for us to fly. Finally, about five months later, Matt was finally able to take me along on one of his flights around Vancouver!
We departed from Boundary Bay Airport, where they had a bunch of small two-seater aircraft. We sat in the cockpit for a bit doing the standard pre-flight check before we were able to get going. Once we were in the air, we headed towards Pitt Lake.
From the photo above, those familiar with Vancouver may recognize a few places, such as the Fraser River, the Alex Fraser Bridge, New Westminster, etc.
While we were in the air, Matt gave me a chance to fly the plane for a bit. By flying, I mean control only the joystick (and looking at none of the dials on the dashboard) and by controlling, I mean struggling to keep the plane flying straight. It was definitely quite intimidating.
The above is a photo of Port Coquitlam and Pitt Meadows with the Pitt River in between.
It didn’t take long to get to Pitt Lake and from there we flew back to Boundary Bay Airport through Surrey/Langley. Here, I gave flying the plane another shot. This time I was a bit better. It wasn’t as scary and I worked up the courage to get the plane to turn left and right.
Further on the flight, it just so happened that there were rain clouds nearby. It was pretty cool to see rain from far away. I had no idea it looked like that. And while there’s rain combined with sunshine, there’s a rainbow. We briefly flew in some rain before we made it back to the airport.
We flew around for about 35 minutes, but it definitely was a really really cool experience! All thanks to Matt for making it possible.