Anyone with a passion for aviation will have spent their time at airports, aircraft hangers and perhaps even on adventurous long-haul flights during which the journey itself is as exciting as the destination you’re about to reach. To extend this interest further, there’s plenty of other ways to take to the skies to delight in one of humankind’s most remarkable and beautiful of achievements, and this article offers you a few options to do so that are both unique and thrilling in their airborne joys.
Hot Air Ballooning
If you’re someone who loves that aerial view but has always resented having to look out of a thick and scratched-up window to do so, hot air ballooning in possibly for you. Available for sunsets and sunrises in your locality, but perhaps most fun in a large group on balloonists who take off and land in similar areas, peppering the sky with their colorful bulbs, this method of sky-walking is serene, care-free and mesmeric as you allow the winds to pull you over landscapes from the comfortable confines of the basket hanging below.
Glider Flights
To fly a glider that’s taken into the skies by a plane and dropped to float gently towards the ground, you need very little training but perhaps a little gumption as you will find yourself in control of an aircraft at a few thousand feet. It’s a wonderful experience, and you’ll only have to concentrate on gentle, beautiful wide banks to circle your landing ground as there’s no source of propulsion on a glider, just the movement achieved by its slow plummet through the skies. It’s the best and cheapest way to get your hands on the controls of a flying machine.
Helicopter Trips
Nowadays, it’s remarkably cheap to buy yourself tickets onto a helicopter all over the world to get a different perspective on some of the most beautiful locations on the planet. Whether that means cruising over the grand canyon under spinning rotor blades or hovering over some of the mightiest waterfalls that currently grace the earth, hitting the skies in the comfortable and thrilling confines of a helicopter’s abdomen is a must-do experience for anyone who loves life a few hundred meters off the ground.
Flight School
If flying, planes, aviation, and sky-exploration are more than just vague hobbies for you, it might be time to try flying out for yourself. That’s to say the end goal will be your becoming an airline pilot – though why not? – but getting yourself down to flight school is a step well worth considering so that you can notch up enough airborne hours to fly a rented aircraft on your own in the future. You’ll need to hone your theory, like how an inertial navigation system operates, but that’s all part of the fun for people fascinated by the power and beauty of flight.
Flying machines have been around for 100 years, but these days they’re far from the haphazard spectacle that delighted spectators from the ground. Get stuck in with these four tips so that you grace the skies that little bit more often.