I finally got to take up my first passenger yesterday. I’ve been waiting to take Amy up for a few weeks now, but we finally made it. I had COH booked for 1400, and I showed up a bit early to discuss the flying club’s phone system with Andrew.
Well, 1400 came and went and COH was nowhere to be found. Eventually, the person who had it booked for the time slot just before me brought it back, 20 minutes late. No apology, nothing…I wont mention who it was.
Anyways, after having a bit of trouble getting the plane started (thanks for the help Dave) we were eventually on our way. My plan was to fly over Stittsville to check out our house and the dog park and then fly over Richmond so Amy could get a look at JK and Dana’s place. I figure we got about half way to Stittsville, perhaps a little more (it was actually very close to the Corel centre) and I noticed it was snowing pretty good. Seeing as I haven’t done a lot of flying in the snow, and I didn’t know if it was just a temporary thing, I opted to turn around and head back.
Terminal directed me to the bridge (as usual) but when I switched over to Tower, they said I could b-line it for the base leg of 22. I was listening to the woman who was working the tower telling other planes about the winds (10 gusting 15 at 300) and asking them if they’d prefer to land 32 instead of 22. I decided that since this was my first time flying COH, and my first time with an official passenger, and since I was flying in snow, that I’d call up the tower and request a landing on 32 as well. It wasn’t a problem. I came in on 32 and was approved for a long landing (as usual for small planes). The landing was actually pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. :) You can call me a pansy for not taking the cross wind landing on 22 if you like, but I wasn’t taking any chances with my fiancee with me! If I had been alone I would have tried it.
So in the end we only ended up flying for about 25 minutes or so, but at least Amy got a feel for it. She said she had a good time and didn’t seem to be the least bit scared so that was good. And…she can now tell people she’s landed on the same runway as the big Air Canada jets land on. :)
Now that I’ve finally taken Amy up as my first official passenger, I can safely take other people up with me without worrying about getting in trouble. I really do want to take her back up on a nicer day soon though.