For Isaac’s birthday last year, we bought him a flying lesson through BuyAGift as he has aspirations to be a pilot when he leaves school.
What we didn’t realise was that we would have to wait quite some time for his lesson, as slots are few and far between.
We initially booked a flight at Chichester, but there was no communication from them, until they cancelled his flight the morning he was due to fly.
Thankfully BuyAGift let us rebook with a different supplier and the experience couldn’t have been more different.
I spoke to Mo at Clifton Aviation who couldn’t have been more helpful. He took all our details over the phone as he wasn’t at work and then phoned us back to book our flight. This time the booking went smoothly with just the right amount of communication.
We arrived at Clifton Aviation an hour before Isaac’s flight and were offered the chance for one of us to go up with Isaac. I volunteered, so we both did the pre-flight training, before having a briefing with Mo.
It was soon time to head to the plane, a small Piper.
Mo set up a camera to record Isaac’s flight and made sure we were both comfortable before we taxi’d away from their hangar, stopping to refuel along the way. We had always wondered where the fuel goes in and it made the experience more authentic.
We then taxi’d along the runway, waiting for a couple of helicopters to land before we could take to the skies.
Sadly for Isaac, it wasn’t the clear day that we had hoped for, however, it did mean that the air was quite still and there were only a couple of pockets of turbulence.
Once we were airborne, Isaac took control of the plane almost straight away and his task was to fly in a straight line. Whilst it sounds easy, it really isn’t and took a lot of concentration.
As the weather wasn’t great towards the south, we headed north from Gloucester airport towards Worcester and back again with Isaac using objects ahead to focus on and keep the plane flying in a straight line.
As he got more confident he did get to perform some more manoeuvres and turns, before heading back to the airport, where Mo took back control and landed us safely.
Isaac flew for an hour and is able to use his certificate towards pilots training should he decide that he wants to progress with flight training.
Isaac really enjoyed his flying lesson and cannot wait for the next time!