Daily Journal #31

My job shadowing experience was one of the most fun things that I have done in a very, very long time. I went to the McClelland Aviation Company out at Springfield’s airport. It is a flight school and an airplane service company. We were supposed to shadow one of the flight instructors, but because he did not do much besides give lessons, we filled most of our time there with one of the linemen that worked there. The lineman’s name was A.J. and he was around 19 or 20 years old and he was a really cool person. His job was to prep the practice plane before the first flight which included fueling up the plane. He showed us how to fill it up and make sure everything was alright. After we filled up that plane, we went with him to go fill up some rich guy’s old T-28 that he flies in air shows across the country. Then it was time for their first flight lesson. It turned out that it was A.J. who would be getting trained and he was a lesson or two away from being able to go up in the plane by himself. This meant that the things they would be practicing were a little advanced. Elizabeth and I got in the plane and after everything was ready, we took off into the skies. First, he practiced very steep turns; we were turning almost completely sideways but there was enough centripetal force to keep us in our seats, and then some. Then came the best part, we heard him throttle down, and then he turned sharply up into a steep climb. Then alarms started to go off as we went slower and slower. Lucky for me, I knew that he was trying to stall the plane so he could practice how to get out of one, and the even better part was that Elizabeth did not know this and she also didn’t know that one the plane stalled, it would go into freefall before the pilot pulled out of it.