Sedona to Grand Canyon National Park

The flight plan email had come in from Deborah last evening as promised. They were going to explore the northern Arizona area after the morning’s lesson. Given how long the trip would take, Deborah had invited Lucy to fly along with them. 

It was going to take Lyle a long time to adjust to getting up with the sun every morning. Lucy, however, sprang out of bed ready to greet the day eager for adventure. She even stole Lyle’s phone and tried to make sense of the flight plan.

When they arrived for their morning flight they were surprised to see a man performing the pre-flight inspection. 

“Hey guys, I am Captain Lance Flanagan. I’ll be your certified flight instructor this weekend. I lead the longer flights around these parts.”

Captain Flanagan looked exactly like Tom Cruise from the movie Top Gun. Captain Flanagan had been flying as long as he could remember. When he was 12 years old, he would fly missions in his favorite PC game: World War 2 Online. While other kids were busy playing outside, Lance was carefully navigating daring missions over virtual Europe.  He—just like Lucy—had earned his real world wings before he could drive. The Air Force Academy couldn’t have had a better applicant. When asked on the admissions essay to describe in two words or less his best attribute he had written: “situational awareness” without even thinking. Lance would never talk about what exactly he did for the military only to say it was classified. Rumor was he flew in from Area 51 each weekend to teach the students in Sedona. 

Lyle noticed that today’s lesson was going to use the airplane Lucy had just purchased.

Lance looked at the plane with pride. “This here is a Diamond Aircraft DA 40 NG. She is one of the newer planes we keep here at the flight school, she is only two years old. She has some very modern features that you are going to love compared to that old Cessna 152.” 

He opened up the side hatch of the the plane. Lyle was still impressed with the nearly all digital cockpit and lavish interior. 

“Don’t you just love that Garmin NXi system? You won’t find those in a 152. A lot of the plane’s processes have been upgraded to be handled by the computer. You are going to be blown away by how easy this thing is to start.”  

Walking over to the engine, Lance, acting like a good plane salesman, opened the engine compartment. “This plane sports an Austro AE300 engine which is a turbo charged, diesel jet fuel burning, liquid cooled, 170 hp engine.”¹

Lucy climbed into the pilot’s seat on the airplane and called out: “The seats recline and there is air conditioning!” 

Lyle laughed, “Lucy’s favorite part about flying is sleeping through the whole trip!” 

Lucy snapped back, “Hey, just because I slept through most of the flight from Los Angeles doesn’t mean I am going to sleep through this one! Besides, I don’t think there are any flight attendants in here serving little bottles of cheap alcohol. Does this thing have a mini fridge?” she said jokingly. 

Lance cracked up laughing. “No mini fridge or flight attendants on this flight, although there are a few nice restaurants at the airports we are going to. Are you sure you still want to come?” 

“Oh yea!” Lucy replied from a reclined position.

“Alright, hop into the back and we will get started. Lyle, you take the left controls, I will be here on the right.”

“Alright Lyle, I have the controls to the airplane. Welcome to the DA 40 NG. You will go over the pre-flight checklist in another class, but I have made sure to review our maintenance records and have visually inspected the airplane. I noted that we are a little low on fuel so we will need to get some prior to departure. In front of you is a Garmin G1000 NXI display panel, we will be looking at the settings on this panel here as we walk through the first couple of checklists. I am going to read out the items, you do them and say “Check”. 

Lyle and Lance went through the controls together.

“You have the controls.” continued Lance.

“I have the controls.” replied Lyle.

“Clear! Go ahead and turn on the engine!”

Lyle turned the key and the engine roared to life. Lance continued: “The neat thing that you will notice about this aircraft is that there is no need to manage the prop, the computer systems do this for us. To move the aircraft forward, we just increase the throttle and move right along. Let’s go ahead and ask clearance to taxi over to the fuel. Great. As we taxi, make sure to maintain a maximum situational awareness of your surroundings at all times. This will help us to avoid collisions both on the ground and in the sky.”²

Lyle taxied the plane over to the fueling area. A staff member came out to load the plane. Lance continued: “This plane takes jet fuel. The flight today is roughly 265 nautical miles the range on this plane is just under 900 nautical miles. We don’t have any heavy luggage on board today, so we are going to fill the airplane, but don’t forget that the weight of the cargo can be a consideration at this step.” 

As soon as the plane was done fueling, Lance announced their intention to take off straight out: “Sedona regional traffic, Diamond Aircraft N95677Z taxiing runway 17 for departure, Sedona Regional Traffic.”

The flight was amazing from the very beginning. Lyle especially loved flying through the canyon that was literally straight off the edge of the runway.

After the quick touch and go in Flagstaff, the Humphrey’s peak climb was awe inspiring.

The plane had to climb 12,633 feet to clear the second highest point in Arizona.³

The weather had almost been clear enough to see the edge of Grand Canyon as soon as the plane had cleared the peak. Before the flight, Lyle had learned that Humphrey’s Peak was actually part of a volcanic mountain range called the San Francisco peaks. 

Lance called out over the intercom as if reading Lyle’s mind. “I bet you are wondering why those are called the San Francisco peaks? Well, San Francisco translates to ‘Saint Francis’ there was a famous Franciscan mission down there. If you think that is cool, check out these volcanoes ahead of us. There are over 600 of them!”⁴

As soon as the plane had pass over the volcanoes, Lance told Lyle the big news. “Change of plans. We are going to be doing a full stop landing up ahead at the Grand Canyon National Park Airport. I have a little surprise in store for you and Lucy. A friend of mine from my squadron is meeting up with us so we can do a little low level flying + camping down in the Grand Canyon, but for that flight we are going to be changing planes to an Xcub. We thought y’all would get a kick out of tagging along, but, we do have to spend the night.” Lance handed Lucy the iPad. "Check this place out; It’s the only airstrip in the canyon. They’ve got horseback riding, ATVs, and river rafting.” 

“I guess we aren’t going to make our frisbee golf tournament!” Lucy laughed.  

The landing at Grand Canyon National Park was amazing. Lyle’s heart skipped a beat when he saw the rim of the Grand Canyon in the distance.

The pair of yellow xcubs were parked on the runway ready to go. Lyle noticed an Italian man with slicked back hair and aviators walking hurriedly around the aircrafts performing the pre-flight inspection.

As soon as Lyle and Lance had parked the plane, Lance hopped out to greet his longtime friend giving him a hug. “Lyle I want ya to meet the one and only Clark Jeffries.”

“Pleasure to meet you.” Lyle said shaking Clark’s hand.

“Clark and I go all the way back to high school. We met each other showing off our tricked out cars in the bi-lo parking lot. MAN we thought we were so cool didn’t we?”

Clark replied, “I was definitely cool, you my friend tricked out an Oldsmobile.” They both died of laughter. 

Lance, wiping away tears of laughter continued on with the introductions: “Lucy and Lyle here are a pair of our new trainees out of Sedona. I thought I’d bring them along for the time of their life as we did some low level flying in the Grand Canyon. Hopefully we don’t scare them too bad on the way into Bar Ten. We can’t all ride in the same plane down into the canyon so, Lyle you are flying with me and Lucy you are flying with Clark. Clark here is one of the best bush pilots and mechanics around, not to mention one of the finest ATCs at the air base. So don’t you worry Lucy, you are in great hands.”

1. LifeStyle Aviation. (2018, July 20). Diamond DA40 NG Introduction [Video]. YouTube.

2. LifeStyle Aviation. (2018, July 20). Diamond DA40 NG Introduction [Video]. YouTube.

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphreys_Peak

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Peaks