Air Tran Flight Extravaganza!

Joshua went with his class to Air Tran for a field trip today. What an experience!  It was jam packed with so many great experiences for the kids and the chaperons.  We started out the morning meeting on of the Customs dogs whose job is to sniff out fruits, vegetables, and meats that are in bags.  His name was Vance, a beagle, and the kids LOVED watching him in action.  The kids tried to find the hidden foods in the bags under all the chairs before Vince got a chance, and Vince was much more accurate than the kids at finding the foods either by sniffing or looking through the bags.  We then went to a room where two flight attendants helped the kids with a craft of coloring wooden airplanes to take home.  After that, we walked over to the Boeing building across the street.  Each student got to get into a 20 million dollar flight simulator machine (the same ones that commercial pilots train on) and do a take off, flight and landing.  This was a really cool experience.  They did not turn on the movement part of the simulator (thank goodness), but it felt like we were moving as we looked out the cockpit window and saw everything you would see if you were a pilot.  Joshua loved this and took off a little jumpy, but then got the hang of it and had a great landing per the trainer! The kids also had some air traffic control training as they had to listen to direction to move themselves along the runway to take off area without running into each other.  Pizza was provided for lunch and then we headed off to the hanger to look at some jet engines (no planes were in for maintenance so the kids didn't get to see an actual plane) and get into a airport fire truck and watch the truck shoot off a seriously strong stream of water on the pavement.  They also got to go up in a bucket ladder (as I did, too, and got to go almost to the top of the hanger...perk of being an adult!) and they sat inside a vehicle that pulls planes to the hanger that need to be worked on.  All of the kids seemed to have an incredible time and it was a great experience for all!  The kids got to end the day with going down the escape slide in the training center as I did, too, and that was quite fun!  Awesome day!