the neighbourhood bought a spitfire in the 2000s and asked him if he wanted to fly it. He was in his 90s. He didn't.

About 20 years ago my husband and I took some sort of sight-seeing flight in the San Francisco bay area on a DC-3. It might have been Otis Spunkmeyer, which seems to have ceased such operations.

On that flight was a man who'd bought his father a ticket and had paid a premium for Dad to fly jumpseat in the cockpit, because in WWII Dad had flown DC-3's over "the hump" in India. Needless to say, Dad was thrilled beyond belief, and he insisted his son take the jumpseat for part of the flight.

It would have been a wonderful flight even without the added treasure of the WWII vet, and this story reminds me of that.

Thanks for posting.

the Luftwaffe ran out of gas then became a paratrooper until he was finally captured by the US in Italy where he became a translator for the American Army. In later years he got his pilot's license in the US - funny story, they made him take flying lessons! He and his flying instructor did not get along at all. His 'final exam' was to see what he'd do when the instructor turned off the engine, telling him "OK, you've lost your engine - what do you do now?". My friend calmly took the key out of the ignition, threw it out the window of the single engine plane and announced "Vell, now ve are going to crash land!" which he then proceeded to do in a pasture with quite a bit of damage to the instructor's plane. He later told me that since he had already crash landed three times before on the Russian Front this time wasn't any big deal. And no, he didn't get his license (at least not that time!).