Support from a nervous flyer

[emnm]

here is a story of a flight i had in 2003, hope it helps all with FoF.

flying from manchester to sanford in march 2003 , the flight over atlantic was so smooth i actually fell asleep, this from a very nervous flyer. but the best part of the flight, and this has helped me so much afterwards, was the flying down the eastern seaboard of the USA. there was many storms across this part of the country that the pilot came over the intercom to tell us that he would be flying manually for the next hour or so as to avoid the tops of the storms. as you can well imaging i was a bit nervous about this. but as i had a window seat i could see all the storm clouds and that the tops were extending way past out flying height, i think this was 37000ft. the pilot then started to fly from left to right and flying between these cloud missing the tops, and for me this was fantastic, dodging all of them as we flew. i had the best flight i ever had that day, very little turbulence even with the pilot flying manually. and the view of the storm clouds was amazing. i learnt from this flight that even with rough weather the pilots do their best to avoid all problems and even with the bad weather a flight an be brilliant.

i hope this will help other as it helped me overcome some of the fear

[Barb-SAN]

Welcome to Taking Flight, emnm!:welcome2:

That sounds like a beautiful flight you were on. I'm hoping to have one like that one day, so I can take lots of photographs of the towering clouds. Capt. Ray posted some photos last summer when he flew between cumulo-nimbus clouds on a flight to Los Angeles. They're on this thread from his forum...part way down...we were having a discussion of summer thunderstorms, and how they look from the ground, and from the air. Click on the link....
http://www.takingflight.us/forums/showthread.php?t=5415

[Barb-SAN]

Thanks for that link, Barb. I must've stopped reading that thread before he put up the pics.

Oh...well, in that case...you also missed reading about how Capt. Ray catches rattlesnakes....;) further along in the thread we got off on a "snake tangent"....

[JPenny]

I had a short flight like that, from PHX to Vegas on a hot summer afternoon. It was INCREDIBLE!!! We wove between and around those fierce-looking clouds that were exploding in slow motion right before our eyes. The grandeur of them, the magnificent glory of their caps shining in full splendor in the sun! And underneath, the purple bulkheads thinly veiling the violent lightning that careened around inside the thunderheads.

I had no fear of flying. I was looking at God.

Jean