Musings: In search of Key lime pie

“Well,” I said, “it takes seven hours to drive to Key West from Tampa.” Maxwell had such a tendency toward motion sickness during long car rides that I could see the trip was about to be aborted.

“How about if we fly?” he suggested, an inspiration that in the end would cost me tens of thousands of dollars. “That would take about an hour and a half but you’d have to help me fly,” I responded.

“I think I can do it if you show me how,” was Maxwell’s final answer, and it sealed the deal.

Although I had routinely been flying my Bonanza while he was growing up, a case of motion sickness during a flight to Montreal when he was a 2-year-old led me to scratch him from all flying trips since. If I ever wanted him to grow up to be a pilot, I reasoned, his bouncing around Florida in the back of a light aircraft before he was ready was a sure way to discourage it.

By the time we returned from our adventure to Key West, Maxwell was smitten more so with the magic of flight than even his beloved Key lime pie.

Freshly bitten by the “aviation bug,” Maxwell’s proclamation upon landing was that he wanted fly to all the airports in the country! We settled on a more realistic goal, or so we thought, of his flying to all the public-use airports in Florida. We developed some rules and set about making plans to begin the adventure. With a qualified pilot in command or CFI aboard to keep things safe and legal, Maxwell would undertake to land and take off from all the 126 airports, to include seaplane bases and the lone heliport. We would take a picture that would identify each airport and keep a log to document the trip. The final rule was that we would plan extra time to have “tons of fun” along the way.

We framed an aeronautical chart of Florida on the wall in our house, and every time he landed at another airport we would stick a color-coded pin in the airport icon on the chart. Green for grass, blue for seaplane bases, black for the heliport, and white for paved strips.

Oh, the places we went! The things we saw! The people we met! The lessons we learned! The attractions we toured! The food we ate! The fish we caught! The fun we had!

As the colorful pins started to cover the chart, Maxwell’s skill at flight planning, aviating, and navigating kept improving until I started to think of him as a real co-pilot.

Shortly after departing his sixty-first airport, Flying Ten in Archer, Florida, Maxwell called to my attention the voltmeter, which was indicating 23 volts instead of the normal 28 volts. I was delighted that he had caught the charging system problem before I did and it was an extra bonus to be able to hand him the checklist and say, “Here you go, this is the first time you deal with an emergency.”

One by one the airports were checked off the list. The longest, Orlando International; the shortest, Fort Walton Beach; the most entertaining, Lakeland during Sun ’n Fun; the busiest, Miami International; the smoothest, Indiantown’s 6,500 feet of heavenly grass. Over and over the wheels touched the Earth until the chart was full of pins. What an adventure it was.

Enough cannot be said about the quality of our air transportation system and all those fine folks who work within it. ATC never ceased to amaze us with their professional and helpful service.

Over a period of four years, Maxwell flew eight different aircraft in achieving his goal. The distance flown was equivalent to flying from Florida to Alaska and back. Three of the flights were made with a CFI while I was providing ground support. At 13 years old, we think that he is the youngest ever to fly to all the public-use airports in Florida, if not being the only person to ever do it.

When the initial flight was made in 2012, there were 128 public airports. Ames Field became privatized and Coastal Airport closed to make way for a school, which resulted in a final tally of 126. If not for the AOPA Airport Support Network, we fear our adventure would have been much shorter than what it was.

“Hey, dad,” Maxwell said when he was finished. “How many airports are there in Georgia?”

Mario Mondo is a multiengine pilot living in Florida.