We had such a fun day today! About a week ago, we received in invite to attend WestJet’s annual family/friend day at the Calgary International airport. Usually private planes can’t land at this airport, so Lennard was very excited to get the chance! My friend, Shannon, took the kids for us at 7:45 and Lennard and I headed out to the airport. We got the plane out, everything checked and in the air by 8:15. Once we were in the air, I wrote down the multitude of radio frequencies that we may need getting in to the airport, and before knew it, we were in Calgary airspace!
I was impressed with how well Lennard did dealing with all the traffic and talking with the air traffic controllers. We ended up landing on the new runway and taxied right up to the huge WestJet hangar. The plane ended up being part of their static air display and we had LOTS of people checking it out and taking pictures. I took a lot of pictures of all the different planes and had fun talking with people from all over. One guy had a RV-7A plane there – the same kind that we are building now. It was fun checking out his plane and seeing what the final product will look like someday!
After visiting with a bunch of people, Rick (our friend that’s a WestJet pilot), asked if we were interested in going on a tour. We thought he meant the hangars we were in, but he took us all over where he works. It was so amazing. We saw the simulators, mock-up planes for flight attendant training, offices, dispatch, cafeteria, board rooms, the works! It was really eye-opening at how many people are really involved in an airline.
We had a quick lunch that they provided. They started up an old engine from a Hercules bomber and later had a Silver Dart competition (which we missed as we were touring around). We visited quite a bit more and then, before long, it was time to take off. There was quite a line up and quite the procedure to get out of the airport, but we made it without too much difficulty. The clouds were really starting to build up, so we were glad we were heading south! I really don’t like flying in the afternoon as it gets so much bumpier and today was no exception. It was so hot and bumpy that I was very happy to land!
It has been such an amazing experience getting to land at a major international airport! Such a fun thing to get checked off the bucket list and even better to get to do it together!
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