Ride Along: LIFT Academy Discovery Flight

If you ask a pilot about the best way to “catch the aviation bug” or determine if becoming a pilot is right for you, they will likely suggest, “Take a discovery flight.” Taking a discovery flight in a training aircraft is vastly different from taking a commercial flight. When you take a discovery flight, you get to see what it is like to be a pilot, be at the flight controls and experience flight exactly like they do with the horizon right in front of you.

On your discovery flight at LIFT Academy, you’ll take off from the Indianapolis International Airport, where you’ll likely be lined up behind (or in front of) an Embraer 175, an Airbus 320 or Boeing 737, to name a few. Once you get the go-ahead from Air Traffic Control (ATC) for takeoff, you’ll feel the wheels of the plane leave the ground after you taxi down the runway, with a front row seat. As you fly over central Indiana, you’ll probably see the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Indianapolis skyline, houses streets and businesses below–oh and corn fields, we are in Indiana! You’ll watch as the pilot navigates the sky and help search the horizon for other aircraft. You might even get to hold the controls and feel what it’s like as the pilot does a maneuver mid-flight. To wrap up your trip in the sky, you’ll watch and listen as the pilot works with ATC and is assigned an approach for landing, and finally see how the pilot lands a plane.

For a sneak peek to see what a discovery flight is like, check out this video of a recent discovery flight with LIFT. You’ll see the pilot and guest aviator’s point of view from take-off to landing. Ready to schedule your own discovery flight at LIFT? Sign up here and fly with LIFT.