Why drive when you can fly? Especially when you are going to an airport anyway!

I didn’t do it every time I could over the past year, but one of the reasons we bought Charlie was to make the travel between airport easier when I was conducting FAA practical tests.

Like any good pilot, I kept logs, and tracked what I did. Well, not only as a pilot, but so I could also give the data to my accountant at the end of the year to see if any of the costs associated with travel to and from practical tests could be leveraged for any taxiing benefits also. You can deduct mileage, why not flight time, right? Well, at least some of the costs can be he tells me. But I digress.

Curious what the total at the end of the year would be, I tallied it up, graphed it, and found that Charlie and I spent a little time together over the year!

Totaling over 34 hours and travelling over 1600 miles, Charlie spirited me across the Michigan, and even a little Indiana, countryside from above to where I provided my services as a FAA Designated Pilot Examiner.

The only drawback, when you fly to an airport it is hard to run out at lunch and get some food…I expect if I tried to taxi to a nearby deli or restaurant with Charlie it wouldn’t go unnoticed or be very successful.

I know that the use of the aircraft saved time over the travels of the year. In some cases, it was the catalyst that allowed more than one test to take place in the same day due to the reduced travel time between two airports that were a significant distance apart. Aircraft are truly time machines.

Oh, and they are just darn fun to fly also. So, with that said, and without getting too esoteric here, Charlie gave me a year with some rather enjoyable transits.