A turtles race to takeoff

Posted by slyskyflyby@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 34 comments

The video isn't super impressive but the story is fun. My father-in-law is a pilot for Kalitta Air and I fly for the U.S. military. One late night in Japan I saw a Kalitta 747 parked next to us on the ramp and texted to see if it was him, turns out it was! We were both busy getting our jets ready to go and unfortunately didn't have an opportunity to see each other but after he picked up his clearance I quickly piped up on the clearance frequency "Connie go fingers." He swapped over to meet me on 123.45 and we caught up for about 10 minutes while we prepped our jets. We both ended up taxiing at the same time and were "racing" each other to see who could take off first but we had an advantage in my plane: due to our weight bearing capacity we had to be given a back taxi clearance on the runway while he taxied on the parallel taxiway. Right as he got to the hold short we flipped a 180 and blasted off out of there.

It's so fun having a father-in-law who is a professional international cargo pilot who flies in to a lot of the same destinations I do. This was the only time we've crossed paths so far but I'm sure it won't be the last.