One of the great benefits to owning an aircraft or even just being a pilot and renting an aircraft, is the ability to save time. For me as a military member, I am relocated every three to four years and because there are no active duty installations in Minnesota, we will never be close to the family. This means that as a family we normally only get to come home and see the family once or twice a year because it's a painful 12-hour drive by car or the airlines gouge us for so much money, that we just can't afford it. besides, taking young kids (4yo and 5mo) on an airline trip is crazy today with all the painful security measures, not to mention the horribly rude airline service that is now the norm today.
By owning our own aircraft we now have the ability to fly to Minnesota and it generally takes only about 2:15 depending on the winds. This is FAR better than a 12-hour drive and significantly cheaper than flying commerical. We also can also leave on our own schedule (weather permitting) and my wife can carry whatever bottles of stuff she wishes since we don't have to deal with the TSA security. Oh and we also don't have to radiate or let strangers fondle our children!!
So this year we decided that we would celebrate Christmas morning at home and let the kids open presents and play, then on the 26th, we would fly to MN for a family dinner. We originally were supposed to go on the afternoon of the 25th, but I didn't want to take any chances with potential icing because of all the snow storms taking place in Iowa and Minnesota.
We departed late afternoon and our flight was uneventful. As we approached Brainerd we had overcast skies with 500' ceilings and tops around 2900'. We received vectors for the ILS RW23, which we had to shoot twice because of close vectoring by ATC and I was not able to get a good set-up for the approach. The picture of the cockpit (although kinda blurry) was taken by my wife just before we descended into the clouds. Not the CMAX (electronic approach charts on the MFD screen. This is just one of the many reasons why I love this aircraft! The second approach went off without a hitch and we landed safely at Brainerd.
After a few days of visiting family we hopped back in the plane and flew back home. Once again a really nice trip and a beautiful sunset. This has been only one of the trips we have had the privilege of taking in the plane and it has helped us to visit our family a lot more, which is important because we want our children to grow up begin able to know their grandparents, uncles and cousins. Without the plane there would be far fewer trips, since it just isn't possible to drive.
