When you get into aviation, it creeps into your blood and every part of you is somehow influenced by it. If you’ve ever spelled your name for a restaurant reservation using the phonetic alphabet, you know what I mean.

That constant, lingering aroma of freshly-cut grass and 100LL avgas even runs to really important events. You might think that airshow pilot who also flies the mighty KC-135R Stratotanker for the US Air Force Reserve and Embraer 145 passenger jets would have plenty on his mind in the sky already. But Saturday, June 6, he had another important mission.

After completing his aerobatic routine in the Pitts S-2C, he made a pass down the show line at low altitude and announcer Rob Reider put his radio on the airshow’s public address system. As he shot down the line, he keyed the mic and made a very important request for clearance: “Haley Norwood, will you marry me?”

Haley, who is also the public relations director for Grayout Aerosports (the company that owns and operates the Pitts) was standing on the announcer’s stand at the time and made pretty short work of saying “yes” on the frequency.

After landing, shutting down, and handing the aircraft over to his ground crew, Billy ran to the announcer’s stand and, just to make it official, got down on one knee, repeated the proposal, and delivered the ring.

It just goes to show that there’s all kinds of magic to be found at your local airshow. And that the bonds that we form in aviation come in all kinds, too. Congratulations, Billy and Haley!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 7:35 am and is filed under Aerobatics, Airplanes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.