Recently me and my friend Chad flew down to Ponca City, Ok on a cross country flight to eat at Enrique’s Mexican restaurant. I was so excited to do this flight because I hadn’t done a cross country flight since I got my pilot’s license in 2020.
A cross country flight is any flight that is over 50 miles from the departure airport and it takes hours of prep work that all starts with a map and a flight plan. You can do these physically or digitally, I normally start physically so I can draw on the map and then I turn it into a digital flight plan.
When planning a cross country flight you have to consider everything to mitigate risk. Reserve fuel, emergency airports along the route, weather along the route, time in flight, creating waypoints and communicating quickly over the radios all while flying the airplane. It’s great to keep these skills at the front of your mind which why I wanted to do another cross country.
We took off late afternoon and headed south for Ponca City!
After about 42 minutes in flight down to Ponca City (which is about an hour and half if you would drive this) we arrived! Check out this video of my landing and some pictures of at the aiport.
After an awesome dinner, we flew back home at 5,500ft with the view of a beautiful sunset! What a blessing it was to see the beauty of the sunset. The Lord is good 🙂
I’m looking forward to my next cross country flight! Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to close out your flight plan 🙂
Bryant Westbrook 