We woke up early, at 5 AM to meet the instructor at the Kona Airport by 6 am. The sun wasn’t up yet, so we did the preflight on the Cessna 172 in the dark with a flashlight. The instructor really expedited our checklists and preflight, so we started up pretty quickly and headed off to the fuel pit to get the fuel tanks topped off.

While we were doing run-up, a UPS 767 took off right before us. The instructor keyed the mic and asked them to be gentle because our run up area was almost directly behind the departing jet blast. We were finished with run-up and cleared for takeoff at 6:45, at which point dawn had just broken over the island.

On departure, we flew south toward Kailua town and the beachfront hotels there.

Coming soon: Flying over the Volcano and getting to the other side of the Island…