I am a pilot. Even for just one day :)

I have to thank a super lovely friend for really making one of my dreams come true. Couple of weekends ago, I went for a day of piloting and I must say, it's a pretty amazing experience. When I heard about all these 'be a pilot for a day' programs, I thought they're quite iffy. You pay RM500 to probably fly the plane for like 10 minutes in the air and that's about it. Not much you can experiment with. But to my pleasant surprise, this was different. I got to taxi the plane to the runway for take off, upon take off, I have control in the skies (just have to watch out for those tricky turbulence due to wind and cloud), level the plane and get the nose back to the right direction, get it ready for landing and upon landing, taxi it back to the hangar. But honestly, although my trainer was really supportive and kept giving me 'control' over the plane, but it's freaky. A LOT MORE freakier than I thought.
Before the whole flying thing took place, the captain assured me it was like driving a car. Oh trust me, it's not. There're only 4 ways to navigate a car, but this one has got a lot more things happening all at once. Keeps you on your toes and at the edge of your seat. The pedals are used for taxi-ing, up and down if you need to apply brakes. When in air, amidst fighting for control with the wind and some bumps, you need to keep at a certain feet and towards the right direction at exactly North 33' or whatever. Hmm. Not rocket science but not exactly dummies guide either, since you only get an hour of verbal prepping before take off.
It's a little scary on air but the pilot was pretty confident so he gave me a lot of assurance. Other than the cool factor, I don't know what else would propel me to take up a full pilot license ;) But I have to say, it's really really pretty darn awesome. Now I can safely tell someone - I've piloted a plane. And I've also jumped off one before. There. Another item in my list checked.



Wawsomes ;)