Orange County Flight Center, John Wayne Airport,CA

I wanted to tell you how i flew over Orange County on a small plane with Orange County Flight Center . It was a great sunny Saturday afternoon, the sky was clear, so that day was perfect for my first flight.  

First, i wanted to tell you how i got on the plane. There is men's thing - we love big toys like cars, motorcycles, boats and planes. Whenever i saw a plane i always wanted to be on the pilot's seat at least once. But for all we know, this pleasure is kind of  pricey. So it happened that  i always postponed my flight till later. I spoke about that with my friends many times and they knew about my desire. So for my birthday my friends decided to give me a gift certificate with a flight lesson at Orange County Flight Center at John Wayne Airport, Orange County, California.  

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At OCFC office, i was asked to sign a waver stating that if anything happened during the flight it would be my responsibility. After that i was introduced to my pilot-instructor. He gave me a head-set and we took his car to the (SNA) airport. OCFC office is located just outside the airport so we had to go through airport security gate and showed our IDs.  Then we pulled next to OCFC's planes.

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OCFC has a pretty big fleet. All planes are different. 

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This one was ours, I think it was Cessna but I don't remember exactly, i believe it was 1986. If you know what plane it is, please leave it in comments.  

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Before take off my instructor briefly explained how the plane works and flies. Then he checked everything outside the plane to make sure everything was sitting tight and not going to fell off during our flight. Then he started an engine. At this point i was just sitting and watching him what he was doing.  Before the flight you need to do many things. After inspection of the aircraft you need to contact the control tower and ask for permission to take off, and then tune in the radio to the frequency of the weather forecast and take a note about the direction and wind strength.  When you receive approval for take off from control tower you can go. In bigger airports it's more complicated as the passenger aircrafts have priority and you need to wait until they pass through and clear the runway. Finally we got a signal for take off and the pilot gave the control of the plane to me. I drove our plane on the ground to the position of our take off.  It was a little bit awkward as you have to manipulate plane with pedals not with steering wheel. Principle of this, you press left pedal you go right, press right you go left.   As we got to the right runway he took control and we took off.           

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In the air, the instructor passed the control over to me again and we went toward the coast line. On this picture is Newport Coast.  

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Laguna Beach. 

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Irvine.

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Irvine. I-405 Freeway.

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My instructor is taking control and getting ready for landing. 

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John Wayne Airport (SNA), Orange County, California. Its main runway is 5,701 feet (1,738 m), which makes it the shortest of any major airports in the United States, and passenger airliners at the airport have never been larger than the Boeing 757. Another interesting fact about the airport is that it is surrounded by four cities: Santa Ana, Irvine, Newport Beach, and Costa Mesa.

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John Wayne Airport was a domestic airport in US till June 3, 2012  when  AirTran Airways arrived in Orange County to begin John Wayne Airport's first flights to Mexico. AirTran now offers daily nonstop service between Orange County and Cabo San Lucas-San Jose del Cabo and between Orange County and Mexico City.

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We had a smooth landing. As far as i know landing is the most difficult part as you have to multitask with crowbars, speed, pedals etc. But  my pilot did a great landing job.    

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To park the plane you need to push it to its parking space because the plane doesn't have revers. I  gladly helped him to do it just to have complete experience.

Overall i really liked it. If i had more free time and money i would probably get a pilot license for myself and get a few planes like John Travolta does. But at this point i will still be dreaming about it.  



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