(If you really don't want to read this, you can go right to the pictures!)

In December 2002, during a  3GPP2 meeting at the Renaissance Wailea in Maui, Hawaii, I had a morning free.  Since it was my first time in Maui, and wanting to get the "big picture" of the island and surrounding islands, I figured a flying trip would do nicely (as well as give me an excuse to go flying).  So another delegate, Larry, and I drove to the Maui Kahului Airport  and rented a Cessna 172 from Maui Aviators.

So, we instead took a "familiarization flight", where the CFI rides along with the pilot and passenger, and also acts a the "color commentary", a virtual tour guide of our flight.  Besides telling us what we were looking at, he also reduced the workload of flying in a new, unfamiliar area by working the radios according to the local custom.

Our CFI was Mike, a mid-20s clean-cut guy.  He looked like he might have been in the military so I asked him if he was stationed in Hawaii.  He explained that he had been "RIF"ed from Continental Airlines as a result of the 9/11 tragedy, and was building time while waiting for another opportunity flying "big iron".  I guess if you have to spend time waiting around for an airline job, you could do much worse than hang around in Maui, Hawaii.

While Mike finished up with his previous customer, a student preparing for his check ride, Larry and I went to pre-flight the Cessna 172, N7813G: a bright yellow plane in pretty good shape, with a fairly new engine.  As soon as Mike and the plane were ready, we hopped in and powered up.

There is no ground control at Kahului Airport, so we just taxied over to the self-serve fuel station to fill up.  After refueling, we powered up, Mike spoke to the tower, and we were cleared to taxi and hold at runway 2, while a Alaskan 737 began rolling for its departure.

In a few minutes, we were cleared for 1000 feet altitude, 2 miles offshore, with a departure to the northwest. As we flew, Mike had to switch frequencies at least once for each island -- each island has its own advisory frequency, in addition to the Kahului Approach Control and Tower frequencies -- this is one of the benefits of having someone familiar with the local procedures.

The pictures below are a record of our flight.  You can click on a thumbnail to view a larger picture.

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