FunkyPilot

January 2018

Flight Experience 3 – The Day I Almost Died!
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Flight Experience 3 – The Day I Almost Died!
Aircraft, Aviation, Flight Experience, Flight Training

Flight Experience 3 – The Day I Almost Died!

By FunkyPilot - Vesa|2018-02-15T19:23:55+08:00January 14th, 2018|Aircraft, Aviation, Flight Experience, Flight Training|

I didn’t crash that day but it was close. ∼Vesa Flight Experience: Liberty XL2 It was a beautiful day in Ormond Beach, Florida, and a regular day in a life of a flight instructor. I showed up at the school early in the morning. The sun was just about to rise and the air was moist with dew. I parked my car at the parking lot outside the airport fence, got out and used my key code to enter the airside of the airport. It was a short walk to the flight school entrance. It was dark inside; I was the first one arriving to work as was usual those days. My goal was to fly as much as possible so I volunteered to do all the available flights, even the early ones. I was about to leave USA for China few weeks later, so my future was unknown and I [...]

Corporate Pilot’s Guide to Hotel Benefits
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Corporate Pilot’s Guide to Hotel Benefits
Hotels, Travel

Corporate Pilot’s Guide to Hotel Benefits

By FunkyPilot - Vesa|2019-04-04T14:44:50+08:00January 10th, 2018|Hotels, Travel|

Hotels, hotels, hotels 2109 update - Marriot, SPG, and The Ritz-Carlton Hotels have now combined their loyalty program into one combined program, that is called "Marriott Bonvoy". The loyalty benefits are still almost the same as before. However, there are now six membership levels: Standard Member, Silver Elite, Gold Elite, Platinum Elite, Titanium Elite, and Ambassador Elite. Details of the program benefits and how to reach each level can be found here. Good think for the customers is that there are now more than 6700 hotels and resorts using the same loyalty program - many hotels to choose from! Below is the old blog post that you may still find interesting to read. How to Maximize your Hotel Benefits That's the topic of the day. It is not the most exciting subject but I feel it is necessary for me to talk about hotels before I start posting more travel related articles. Hotels [...]

Flight Experience 2 – The Scare over Australia
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Flight Experience 2 – The Scare over Australia
Aircraft, Aviation, Flight Experience

Flight Experience 2 – The Scare over Australia

By FunkyPilot - Vesa|2018-02-26T21:02:37+08:00January 7th, 2018|Aircraft, Aviation, Flight Experience|

Flight Experience 2 – Challenger 605 The Scare over Australia This is a post about a scary situation I once had flying the Challenger 605 over Australia. We were on a two week trip around Southeast Asia and Australia. The aircraft was a Challenger 605 with two pilots, one flight attendant, and eight passengers. The trip started from Ningbo, China to Bali, Indonesia, with a fuel stop in Sanya. Nothing really exciting happened on the first day. Just the usual stuff of following our preselected airways and navigating around occasional thunderstorms. We got up to 40,000 feet which is higher than most airliners usually fly at. At this altitude we were able to overfly most of the bad weather, but later in the afternoon the storm buildups exceeded even that altitude. But that’s normal when you cross from South China Sea to Java Sea and finally to Bali Sea. [...]

Destination: Anchorage, Alaska
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Destination: Anchorage, Alaska
Cities, Countries, Travel

Destination: Anchorage, Alaska

By FunkyPilot - Vesa|2018-02-15T16:33:45+08:00January 3rd, 2018|Cities, Countries, Travel|

Stuck in Anchorage This post should give you a good overview of a corporate pilot life. Last April I got stuck in Anchorage for about a week and this is how it happened. This post is about Anchorage, but let me first do a quick recap of the events that led me there. The aircraft I currently fly is a Bombardier Challenger 605. It is a medium size business jet with seats for 12 passengers, two pilots, and one flight attendant. All aircraft need to undergo regular maintenance inspections annually or between certain flight cycles. Our Challenger aircraft is required to have a major maintenance inspections every year in which the aircraft is essentially taken apart and then everything is put back together. During the inspection the parts that are worn out or otherwise need replacing are replaced. This inspection usually takes three to four weeks to complete [...]

December 2017

Flight Experience 1 – The Day that Shocked the World
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Flight Experience 1 – The Day that Shocked the World
Aircraft, Aviation, Flight Training

Flight Experience 1 – The Day that Shocked the World

By FunkyPilot - Vesa|2020-02-15T14:08:41+08:00December 31st, 2017|Aircraft, Aviation, Flight Training|

Flight Experience 1 - Cessna 152 I was planning to write a post introducing my first training aircraft, the Cessna 152. But the internet is full of detailed technical information about the aircraft, so writing about the aircraft would add little value to anyone. Instead of writing about the aircraft I decided to describe an experience I had flying this particular type of aircraft. I will provide few details and a brief description about the aircraft on my aircraft page, but if you are interested to learn more technical details about the aircraft then you should check out Wikipedia for example. Cessna 152 Day as a Flight Instructor About four months into my flight instructing days I was working in Kissimmee, Florida, just outside Orlando. It was my first job as a pilot and I wanted to fly as much as possible. During [...]

Vesa and Wang Yan Pre-Wedding Travel Video

By FunkyPilot - Vesa|2017-12-31T11:03:16+08:00December 31st, 2017|My Story|

As I start my blog I want to share a video I made for my wedding in 2014. This video gives you an idea who I am and gives me some credibility as a traveler and an aviator. The video is slightly over an hour long, and it will probably be the longest video I will ever post here. It is the first this type of "music video" I have done using a movie editor. There are some parts I wish I could edit but unfortunately I lost some of the source files couple years ago. To edit it now would take a considerable amount of time as I would basically have to recreate the whole video. Creating the video was a very personal and important project for me and it will be part of the "My Story" page in this blog.