Nathaniel LeMaster

Well, where do I start.

First off, there is a program called the Michael Hoefflin Foundation in our valley. It was started when Michael Hoefflin died of cancer and it’s purpose if to give the families and victims of cancer in the Santa Clarity Valley a source of support, information and activities.

Because of my interest in Aviation, they have been trying to get me an opportunity to take a flight in a small plane. We have been trying to plan it for a number of weeks now, but because of scheduling conflicts and weather conditions it was not working out, The person that we were working with then called to tell us that she was switching pilots to someone who hopefully was going to be less busy. Shortly afterward, we scheduled a flight for this Saturday, Feb 3’rd in a Cessna 182. We were told however that plans might change and we might have to postpone the flight because Darren, the pilot was on-call as he was a captain on a private jet. Then, on Friday, we got a call telling us that the Cessna wasn’t going to work out for Saturday because he had to fly the jet, but if we were interested, I could fly with him on the first leg, and I could bring my two brothers.

The situation was this: The plane is a Challenger 620, seating 13 people in luxury (if it were in airline configuration, it would seat many more) plus a crew of 3 (two pilots and flight attendant). The plane is privately owned but when not flying for the owner, it is also chartered. It is based out of Chino airport so we had to fly to Burbank to pick up the passengers. The pilot lives in Castaic so he said that he could come by and pick us up.

This morning we were picked up at ~6:20Am and drove out to Chino Airport where the ground crew already had the plane fueled up and ready to go. We went over the plane and he showed us the systems and walked us through just about every step of the pre-flight both external visual inspection and the much more complicated systems check inside.



The Challenger requires both a pilot and a copilot to fly. The other pilot showed up, and the flight attendant was his wife. After the systems check, we headed off toward the runway. After we had clearance we took off and headed out to Burbank. We landed, and moments later my family showed up. Total flight time was about 13 minutes in the air and a maximum altitude of somewhere around 8,000 feet. To drive that it would of been at least an hr, and much more if there was any traffic which there is most of the time.

After we landed, my family got a tour of the plane then we talked to the captain for awhile and then headed off toward our Grandparents house for our Grandma’s birthday. It was a really neat experience, the amount of info that the pilot provided and the experience is going to be a big help to assist me in determining what road the Lord would have me take. It never ceases to amaze me, how the Lord works in mysterious ways to work his perfect will and continues to give me experiences that I never thought that I would ever be able to have. FYI, that plane costs $5,000/hr to charter and a minimum of 3-hr flight..



I’d like to give thanks to Darren Paul, the Pilot in command who enabled this entire experience to happen and to the Michael Hoefflin Foundation for bringing the opportunity to our attention, and to the Lord for the marvelous kindness that he shows to me day by day.

Praise his name!

Blessings on you all!
Nathan

I put up a photo-gallery Here with the rest of the pictures (register and sign in to comment and see more pictures [click the little “@” at the top}).