The View From 100K

Thanks to a certain Aussie pilot and 100K others!

Its lovely, really it is, this view from one-hundred thousand. Not 100,000 feet silly, one-hundred thousand readers.

Thanks to you, and you and you, and so many others, FLYING LESSONS crossed this exciting threshold sometime during (my) Wednesday night in New Zealand.

Numbers being an arbitrary but nonetheless widely accepted gauge of progress, I am taking this opportunity to say THANK YOU! and provide a de-brief of some of FLYING LESSONS past destinations. I've sure had fun writing about them and I hope you've enjoyed reading about:

Idiotic journalists who savaged aviation in Time and top-ten-listed airline safety in USNews (as if!).

Qantas A380 Capt. Richard de Crespigny

Aviation success stories and a couple of heroes not associated with a certain dashing airline pilot-turned-television-commentator with the initials C.S. or even with a certain Qantas-captain who goes by the moniker Capt. Fantastic and who is still flying the Airbus A380 the largest commercial passenger airliner. ever.

Little accidents with big implications, and big accidents with big implications of which there were several; Air France #447, Qantas #32, Colgan #3407.

Big disasters that ended well thanks to multi-national cooperation.

And big projects like the magnificent runway at Madeira Island Airport underused but waiting for the world to discover.

The sorry state of affairs in emergency medical helicopter operations. The "we're saving lives" front story and the billion dollar back story.

Bad boy pilots and ewwww pilots and a flight attendant who pulled a Howard Beale before pulling the emergency door on a JetBlue flight.

Airport security, (yawn) sexy aviators (yeah!) and sexy and funny airport security (say what?)

Air New Zealand Beech 1900 arrival at Wellington Airport earlier this week

The tedium of commercial airline operations (can we change this pleeeze?) 

The thrill of stunt flying

The freedom of general aviation as celebrated every fourth of July at a tiny airport in Danbury, Connecticut. 

Flying has confounded, delighted, worried, amazed, teased and frustrated us for  more than a century. It also unites us, my wonderful readers. After all, what could prompt a glowing profile of one's mother-in-law other than the fact that mine was a welder on the World War 2 Corsair? 

So, thank you, gracias, shukran, danke, tika hoki, merci, arigatou and spasiba to each one of the 100,657 of you (as of this moment) for giving me the opportunity to reflect on the global, multi-faceted, miracle of flight.

Flying with Air National Guard Lieutenant Col.aerobatic pilot John Klatt