A Flight For Fun

A pilot goes out for a fun flight that turns deadly

John Johnson is a pilot of small aircraft single engines and flies for fun. Today he is taking his two nephews out for a fun flight and decided to fly over their parents home to let the boys look down on their house.
He drove them to the airport, checked out the airplane, and they got in and flew off toward their mom and dad‘s home.
John turn to his nephew Skip, who sat in the right seat next to him, in the four seater aircraft and handed Skip a tablet with an aeronautics program on it that allowed Skip to see where they were. Like in a car GPS the program had a little airplane above the ground on an Aviation map.
John radioed airport traffic, which is how the pilot talks at a non-towered airport, and told traffic he was leaving the airport and flying east. He explain to the boys that all he had to do was fly the airplane along the map line to the airport on the map. The airport has a designated magenta line running from the airport they took off from to another airport near their home. John explained how the program worked and Skip handed the tablet back to Larry to look at it.
“Skip, what do you think of flying so far?” John said.
“It is so cool uncle John.I can’t wait till I can take lessons“ Skip said.
“Yea, this is awesome.” Larry chimed in from the backseat.
“Look down there,” John said as he turned the airplane in a bank to the right pointing out the right window toward the houses below them. “There’s your house, right there, the blue one. Do you see it? “ John asked the boys.
“That is so cool uncle John. It looks so small. Oh look there’s Mom on the front porch waving to us.” Larry said as he waved his hand.
“ Larry, mom can’t see us way up here. She just sees the airplane.“ skip said.
“Oh yeah, how does she know it’s us? Uncle John, how does she know it’s us? Can we wave back somehow? “
John moved the airplane yoke, the steering wheel, left and right a few times, making the wings of the airplane move and said, “Your mother knows my airplane, but this is how you signal someone with the airplane to let them know you’re waving or saying hi. It also lets them know if you hear them, if they’re talking on the radio to you and you’re trying to let them know you heard them but you can’t respond if your radio Is out.” “One more turn and we will head back.” John said, banking the airplane in a tight left, circling above the house.
“Hey, look Timmy Thompson who lives next door.” Skip said, as he put his hands over his eyes and cried out, “Oh, that hurt, what was that?”
John yanked his ball cap brim down to protect his eyes, leveled the wings of the airplane, gave it full throttle and climbed away from the houses. He assumed Timmy Thompson had aimed a laser at their plane in fun not knowing he could blind them, it was just becoming dusk. John was going to give the boys a night flight too to let them see what it is like and what a night landing is like to help him explain to Skip, who is interested in becoming a pilot.
“Skip, are you alright?” John and Larry said at the same time.
“I see red dots,” Skip said, putting his hands back over his eyes. “What happened?” John turned the airplane back toward the departure airport.
“I know!” Larry said, “Timmy has one of those handheld laser things and he aimed it at the airplane. Didn’t he Uncle John?”
“Yes boys, I think Timmy needs to have an exclamation about blinding pilots with laser beams. That is very dangerous. If he would’ve blinded me we might’ve crashed, or one of you would’ve had to land the airplane.“

They got the airplane back to the airport and landed without any further incident. When John took Larry and skip home he talk to their parents about the laser being fired into the airplane and Larry and Skip’s dad went next-door and asked Mr. Thompson to come over and bring Timmy so they could talk about it.
John explained how the laser being fired at an airplane can blind the pilot and then you can’t see to land.
Timmy apologized saying he didn’t know any of that and he would read up on it but he would never do it again. Mr. Thompson and Timmy went home.
Skip said, “ I still want to become a pilot and I still want to fly more Uncle John.”
John smiled and said, “As long as it’s okay with your Mom and Dad.”

Until next time...

Author's Note

Quick story off the cuff. The computer word correct makes writing difficult sometimes it capitalizes where you don’t want it and changes the word if it doesn’t recognize it.