Happy Birthday, Dad

My father passed away over 8 years ago. He loved flying with me, and I loved taking him up flying. He died four years before I would fly my first airliner, but I know he would have come out to the airport to see me fly into Cleveland-Hopkins for the first time. (Sadly, my first flight into CLE was also our airline's last flight there in the old Dash-8. It would be over 3 more years before we'd fly into it again, this time as an all-jet airline.)

I still think of him often. I occasionally get sad when I think about how he never got the chance to see me go from the 2-seat Flight Design light sport airplane we used to poke holes in the sky together in to the captain of a jet airliner. I know he'd be happy and proud, which lessens some of the sadness sometimes.

This year, Wednesday also happens to fall on what would have been his 71st birthday, so I'm going to do something I almost never do and go back into the archives. I'm re-posting "Last flight with my best passenger" as this week's blog entry. It is the story of an impromptu flight up the Ohio River with him. What was supposed to have been a much shorter flight with him turned out to be a much longer, much more fun experience, but unfortunately (and unbeknownst to us), it would be our last one together.

You can read it here. See you next Wednesday!

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The author is an airline pilot, flight instructor, and adjunct college professor teaching aviation ground schools. He holds an ATP certificate with ERJ-145 and DHC-8 type ratings, as well as CFI, CFII, MEI, AGI, and IGI certificates, and is a Master-level participant in the FAA's WINGS program and a former FAASafety Team representative. He is on Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy, has a Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel, and is on Twitter as @Lairspeed.

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