Do you know Brownian motion, the apparently random motion animating molecules which constantly move but stay around the same position ? Flying is quite similar…

I logged 348:55 hours in 423 flights. I operated in 39 different airports. Because I swapped seats a lot with fellow pilots, there are 3 airports where I did only land, and 3 other from which I only took-off. I landed in and took-off from the 33 others. I flew 113 different “departure – destination” combinations. This looks like Brownian motion…

Why doing that ? What is left in the end ? Passengers bring photos and videos back. As pilots, we make entries in our logbooks, one for each flight. Personally I add remarks like name of passengers, or important figures, like 500th landing, or 300th hour.

I also get my logbook stamped each time I land in a new airport. This is quite common practice in Europe: pay the landing fee, stamp the logbook. I will soon post scanned pages of my logbook with my favorite stamps: Biggin-Hill, White Waltham in UK (far away for me), but also Samedan (higher airport in Europe) and the page of my first solo, and initial IFR check.

Flipping my logbook’s pages bring many pleasant, stressful, interesting and happy moments back. In my opinion, this is the most valuable thing remaining after all these flying hours. All the money spent for these 423 flights was really worth it – however I’ve never been brave enough to sum it all

If you have special, exotic, or simply important stamps in your logbook you want to share, please e-mail them to me (see About Me page for my address), I’ll be happy to publish them together with extracts from my logbook.