Every so often you get to ask for something you’re not sure you’ll get.
We were leaving Toronto on a Sunday morning, headed home. Niagara Falls sits about seventy-five miles down the road — practically on the way. It seemed worth asking.
Sunday Morning at Billy Bishop
Same crew as the flight in. My wife up front with me, my friend and his family in back, and all of us a few pounds heavier after a weekend of Toronto food.
Before we taxied out, I made the request to Billy Bishop tower: could we divert over the falls and circle at 4,000 feet?
Tower couldn’t approve it. That call belonged to the next controller down the line.
So we took off, pointed south, and carried the question with us.
Cleared
I figured we’d be told to stand by. Maybe get a “we’ll see what we can do.”
First call to center, I asked again.
They said yes.
The Mist Comes First
You see the mist before you see the falls.
A white column rising out of the landscape, visible from a long way out, like smoke from something enormous. Then the gorge opens up below the wing — and there it is.
Lap One
Four thousand feet. The Horseshoe Falls on one side, the American Falls on the other, and the whole thing turning slowly beneath us as we came around.
Photographs don’t prepare you for the scale. The volume of water going over that edge is something you feel more than see. The mist climbs half a mile into the sky. From above, you get the entire shape of it at once — the river, the drop, the gorge, the towns on both sides.
Lap Two
One lap was the plan.
But nobody in the airplane said a word about leaving. So we did the only reasonable thing and went around again.
The second time is different. You stop reaching for the camera. You just look.
West to Detroit
Two laps, and it was time to head home.
Coming back into the United States in a private plane, you have to land at an airport with customs officers on duty. On a Sunday, in the entire state of Michigan, that meant exactly one option: Detroit.
Big airport. Long runways. Airliners at every gate, and one Centurion taxiing in among them.
We parked at the Signature FBO and a customs officer walked right out to the airplane. He checked five passports at the wing, welcomed us home, and that was it. No terminal, no line — back in the country in under ten minutes.
We refueled, stretched, and got ready for the last leg.
What Makes This Kind of Flying Different
You can’t ask a commercial airline to circle Niagara Falls.
That’s the difference. In a small plane, with a radio and a reasonable request, sometimes the answer is just yes. A seventy-five-mile detour turned an ordinary flight home into the thing everyone still talks about.
Ask for the detour. Sometimes you get it.
Watch the Full Video
The full flight — the request, the approval, and both laps over the falls — is up on YouTube.
Have you ever asked ATC for something you didn’t expect to get? Tell me about it in the comments — I’d love to hear how it went.
Blue skies and tailwinds.
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