Friday photo: Generations of air travel

The view: A DC-3 sits outside the Frontiers of Flight museum ramp as a 737NG shadow departs.  The first 737-300 delivered to Southwest airlines is also just visible in the upper left corner. The pilot: Chris Schaich The airplane: Boeing…

Friday photo: Grand Canyon wrapped in a blanket

Maximum depth of the Grand Canyon is 6000', shortest width is 600' with an average of 10 miles in most places.  Even BonBon could do the simple math.  So we puckered up for a "scenic flight" across one of the great seven wonders.

Friday photo: 5,500′ over the mountains north of Asheville

5,500’ over the North Carolina mountains north of Asheville, NC. It was a glassy smooth evening with the leaves changing colors. Gorgeous!

Friday photo: The Guitar Tree

The history behind this amazing creation by the farm owner said it was a gift to her wife. The Cypress and Eucalyptus trees covering around 25 hectares were planted by 1970 having a height of 15 to 25 centimeters at that time.
Bahamas water

Friday Photo: beautiful Bahamas water

As we flew across the southwest corner of Eleuthera, the water got very green and looked very shallow. It was nearly impossible to tell where the surface of the water was. We were just at the right altitude to see the greenish cast in the water, white clouds, and blue sky at the same time. There were just two frames like this before the colors faded.

Friday Photo: shooting the gap

Sometimes the detour is the best part of the flight. That's the view from the left seat of Chris Granelli's Cessna 210: "Spectacular views of filtered evening light between the dark scattered storms, including more than one rainbow and even more deviations. Well worth the added flight-time. Both ways."

Friday Photo: smoke on

There's nothing like an airshow, especially when the white smoke from the performers streaks across a perfectly blue sky. That's the image Santiago Arbelaez captures in this Friday Photo, and the Beech 18 in the foreground isn't bad either. As he says, "Keep the image—sorry, the symphonic sound can’t be reproduced!"
R44 view

Friday Photo: New York helicopter views

The first opportunity I got to take my wife up in the R44 as a pilot. We took a ride west along the south shore of Long Island up to the Hudson River. We passed the Statue of Liberty and the amazing views from the sky of Manhattan. It was a memorable experience and I cannot wait to do it again!
Sunset wing

Friday Photo: sunset over South Carolina

For Duncan Witte, the shorter days of fall aren't all bad, especially when his Piper Arrow is involved. "I really enjoy evening and night flying in the autumn. The weather is getting cooler, the air is smooth, and you sometimes get a spectacular sunset like this one."
Ercoupe takeoff

Friday Photo: Miss Piggy and me

Still can't believe I can fly by myself at the age of 70. What an accomplishment for a farm girl from Kentucky. The thrill of flying friends and family or just getting away from the earth when you just want to be alone... I always say it's as close as I can get to God and not die, He and I talk a lot when I'm up there.
MTN airport

Friday Photo: waterfront runway

I started my Private Pilot journey at this airport at Middle River Aviation. In the spring I did a fly over of the airport, doing a transition over the class delta airspace due to the DC SFRA and Aberdeen Proving Grounds restricted area. And then three months later I became a one tenth owner of a Cessna 172SP hangared at this same airport. I had no idea at the time that it would become my home airport as an airplane owner.

Friday Photo: peeking into North Vietnam from Laos, 1972

Looking east across the Annamite Range that lies between North Vietnam (NVN) and northern Laos with the monsoon weather over NVN. On this particular mission, I stayed in Laos. A few weeks later, I flew down the "Fish's Mouth" (at one point, the border between NVN and Laos looks like the mouth of a fish jumping out of the water, east to west, to catch a lure).
Cirrus over mountains

Friday Photo: Appalachian Spring

The ballet Appalachian Spring was written by Aaron Copland in 1944. Created as the war in Europe was drawing to an end, the titular orchestral suite captured the imagination of Americans who were beginning to believe in a more prosperous future, a future in which men and women would be united again. A powerful song and an equally powerful vision. This photograph, taken on an Angel Flight, visually captures the hope offered every spring.
Sunset DTW

Friday Photo: Detroit sunset

This was our second father/son trip to Oshkosh in our jointly-owned 210 but our first one while flying at sunset, which made for a very memorable view of DTW, downtown Detroit, and the various airports in the area where Dad learned how to fly many years ago.

Friday Photo: landing on the centerline

No matter what the rest of the flight looked like, a great landing means touching down right on centerline. David Smith shows that perspective in this Friday Photo. He was landing a Cessna 172 at Harford County Airport in Maryland when he adjusted his airspeed, managed his descent rate, worked the rudder, and kept it right in the middle. No easy task with the wind blowing (note the windsock).
Stearman

Friday Photo: a Stearman patiently waits

This was the end of day 7 of a 9-day journey flying cross country to get the plane to its new home in May of 2020. We had been battling high winds and turbulence for seven hours by the time we landed at Winslow, AZ (INS).  We pushed the big biplane out of the wind and into the hangar that the airport FBO made available to us. After closing up the doors and unloading, I took a minute to take in the view.
Buffalo

Friday Photo: Buffalo at night

Two pilots, one airplane, and a mission to fly for dinner—that's the start of a fun flight. Add in a calm night and the twinkling lights of Buffalo, New York, off the wing and you have the perfect flight. That's the view Mark Bellis and Marc Volpe share in this Friday Photo.
Sunset with airplane

Friday Photo: sunset departure

"Few things in life can beat the view of a beautiful fall sunset framed in the wings of your favorite biplane," says Todd James. It's hard to disagree after seeing his photo, which shows a Marquart Charger MA-5 lifting into the skies with a glowing yellow sun on the horizon.
Cessna 206

Friday Photo: Cessna 206 ready to fly

SVCS is a general aviation airport located a dozen miles south of Caracas, Venezuela, and separated from the city by a low mountain range. That makes the perfect backdrop for Francisco Salas's beautiful Friday Photo, which also includes some picturesque clouds framing the stout Cessna 206.
Sunset Warrior

Friday Photo: flying into the sunset

This picture sums up a flight with a lot of important elements: an airplane, a father and sons, a great sunset, and the promise of a Christmas together. Michael McDaniel captured it all on the way home to Decatur, Alabama, in a Piper Warrior late last December.