The following missive was written by Cirrus SR20 Pilot Jerry Zezas... who kindly allowed us to share it with all of you.

"... of the Angel Flight I did last Thursday. I took a young girl who was a lung transplant patient home from Shands Medical Center in Gainesville to Miami. As we flew south, just past Lake Okeechobee around 6:00pm, I started my descent into Opa Locka airport and was busy with Miami ATC vectors and altitude crossing instructions for quite a while (busy airspace down there). I turned to see if I was descending too fast for my passenger and asked how she was doing. She had been leaning her head on the door and turned to me to tell me she was fine, yet there were definite tears in her eyes.

I, feeling quite guilty that I'd descended too fast and hurt her ears, told ATC that I needed to shallow my descent since I had a medical patient on board. They, as usual, were very understanding and basically gave me PD altitudes the rest of the way in.

The end of the story is that, when we landed at Opa Locka, I apologized to this poor young girl for descending too fast and hurting her ears. She looked at me, puzzled, and then put 2 and 2 together.

She said the reason she was crying was not because of her ears, but because she'd spent so much time in the hospital that this had been the first sunset she'd seen in over two years! She then gave me the sweetest hug, before walking to her car and going home for the holidays."

This aviation thing we love... it is such a gift to all those touched by it in oh-so-many ways.

Happy Holidays to you all -- Jim Campbell, ANN

FMI: www.angelflight.com