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The pressure on my face was so intense, it gave me a headache.

Years ago, I stood on a clifftop in Wales, on Britain’s west coast, and was nearly knocked off my feet by an 80-mile-an-hour gale blowing in from the North Atlantic. Because air is invisible and transparent, almost a void, we tend to think of it as lacking substance. The key conceptual leap to understanding flight is changing how we think about the air. We rarely give much thought to what makes it possible, and when we do, it tends to make us nervous. We fly all the time-for business, for vacations-but for most of us, traveling by plane is like a magic-carpet ride, and the pilots are the genies. Since then, flying has become a thoroughly mundane, if poorly understood, part of modern life.

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Little more than a century ago, we worked out how to do it ourselves. So I learned to fly.į or millennia, humans looked up at the birds in the sky and wondered about flight. I just wanted to see what life still had to offer. I didn’t have any fantasies of being Tom Cruise in Top Gun. I wasn’t trying to fulfill a lifelong dream. I heard people talking about “a whole year wasted.” I hated the sound of that, and rebelled at the thought of resigning myself to it. For so many of us, the pandemic was a year of disrupted plans and dashed hopes. It shouldn’t take a crisis to push us outside our comfort zones, but sometimes it helps. My family and friends were slightly puzzled, and wondered if I was having some kind of midlife crisis.

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I bought an online “ground school” course-a series of video classes that teach flying basics-to learn more, and took the logical next step: I signed up for real-life flying lessons. As my enjoyment grew, so did my curiosity.

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Unable to go on a trip, something I love doing, I turned to traveling virtually: I started playing the newly released Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 on my PC. Then, during the pandemic lockdowns, my life took an unexpected turn.

At age 52, I had just earned my pilot’s license.Īll my life, I assumed that flying an airplane was something other people were born to do, not me. But this time, I had answers, and knew I was up to the challenge of landing a plane. Could we figure out what to do? Would we live to tell the tale? In the past, I would have asked myself those same questions. The story went viral for several days, perhaps in part because we can all imagine ourselves in that nightmare come true. Remarkably, the controller was able to direct the passenger to take the controls, reach an airport, and safely land. The pilot of a single-engine Cessna 208 had collapsed, leaving the sole passenger-with no experience at all flying a plane-to fend for himself in the cockpit. For reservations visit ba.com/Madeira or call 08.I n May 2022, an air-traffic controller in Florida received a frantic call. Includes Euro Traveller return flights from London Gatwick and accommodation. Madeira - British Airways Holidays offers seven nights at the 4* Quinta Da Portada Branca, from £389 per person, travelling June 10 - September 30. “While we will be focused on the technical aspects of the landing procedure, our customers will be able to enjoy the great views of the Atlantic and the beautiful island of Madeira.”įlights to Funchal can be booked on ba.com with each-way fares starting from £61. It’s built into everything we do, including our approved plan for flights to Funchal. īritish Airways Captain Ally Wilcox, said: “Our highest priority is always safety. Watch the video of the Funchal landing here. In this video two of the airline’s highly trained pilots, British Airways Captains Ally Wilcox and Ian Mills, show how it’s done. The airline started flying three times a week from Gatwick to Funchal on May 11, 2015. Pilots flying the three times a week service from Gatwick must undergo specialist training, including flight simulation to study every aspect of the approach in detail. British Airways’ expert pilot training team created a bespoke plan that received approval and allowed the airline to start flying to Funchal. The airport – one of the most challenging landings on the airline’s worldwide network – requires special approval from the Portuguese aviation authority for pilots to fly there. A new video from British Airways gives its customers a pilot’s eye view of landing into one of its newest destinations - Funchal, on the island of Madeira.

Cockpit view landings