FL450

There are some wonderful benefits of flying up around 45,000’ (FL450) on a private jet. Most commercial jets fly in the 30,000-35,000’ range. Up there at higher altitudes the air is usually smoother and there is less traffic. You can often pick up the fast winds aloft and get some speed assist to boot. Many a day, we would hear the commercial jets calling ATC to see how the ride was at different altitudes when they experienced turbulence and they couldn’t find a smooth ride in their range. Just for grins my pilots on the Falcon 7X or Gulfstream 650 would contribute to the conversation and advise that there was a smooth ride up at FL450-500. Without fail that would be followed by radio silence and an almost audible murmur from below… “assholes.”

Another huge benefit from flying on jets with many huge windows (including those in the cockpit) is the spectacular view. I love to dabble in photography and learned to leave my Nikon out to catch some magnificent shots to share. My passengers would ask me to forward my images to them, and I quickly became their photographic record keeper of their journeys. Some of the most spectacular sights were along the northern route from the West Coast of the US to Western Europe. One epic summer day the view was breathtaking over Greenland:

Calved Glacier

Heading up to Anchorage one day during the summer we caught a spectacular view of the Portage Glacier just outside of town as we made our approach. I had visited that glacier on the ground many times, but the all-encompassing view as we flew in low over the glacier was astounding:

One day on a flight from London to Rome, we made a stunning pass over the Italian Alps and Lakes Lugano and Como. That was the kind of thing that made you so grateful for such an opportunity.

On another interesting trip to Saipan that had us airborne for over 21 hours I marveled at the simple reflection of the clouds on the South Pacific. That was such an interesting trip because my passengers were 4 security personnel accompanying $4,000,000, from the Federal Reserve in San Francisco which was needed to open a casino on the island. I’ve never seen so many armed people around a plane as surrounded us in California, until we landed in Saipan and the entire police force from the island showed up. The flight was a lot of fun because these folks did not travel privately very often and enjoyed every detail of the flight. They were real troopers! We all enjoyed the movement of the clouds over the vast landscape of ocean where they were often the only sight for hours:

When it takes that long to get somewhere, the sun usually rises and sets a few times. That gets confusing. I finally took a picture of the rising? setting? sun between cloud layers. I got another shot of the moon either rising or setting. Day and night just blend together. I would have to check my watch to see if it was a sunrise or set, or what day it was for that matter.

Another sight I was so amazed to see was the Amazon River from the air rather than in a book. In a way it looked smaller than you would think, but I may have been expecting a flowing superhighway that stories depict. The interesting thing was flying over that massive wilderness at night to arrive in Sao Paulo in time for meetings in the morning. We would spend hours over absolute darkness, no lights whatsoever. The pilots would have to do routine checks with ATC to verify our course like when we fly over the Atlantic to Europe. Seeing that wilderness during the day was stunning:

After taking a client to Buffalo, NY, the crew decided to revisit Niagra Falls which none of us had done since we were kids. Wow, just wow! After catching a few good shots from the Maid of the Mist, we were treated to a completely new perspective as we climbed out after takeoff.

People would ask me why I liked flying private better than commercial, and these are the kinds of experiences that just are a gift every day. The world looks so peaceful from 45,000’. If only more people could look at it from that perspective. Thanks for taking a high-flying flight with me today, now you can go back there whenever you need. We need that a lot lately…