Have You Seen This? Incredible POV of plane landing on runway

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

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THE SKY — I distinctly remember the first time I was going to ride on an airplane. We were headed to the state of Washington to visit my grandparents, and I was incredibly excited to get on that plane. I badgered my poor father with incessant questions for weeks leading up to the trip.

Me: "What's it like going that fast?"

My dad: "You don't feel it."

Me: "What's it like being that high in the air?"

My dad: "You don't notice it."

Me: "What's the cockpit like?"

My dad: "I don't know, they don't let you in there."

Me: "What's it like going through a cloud?"

My dad: "It's not like anything. It's just air."

That last question was the really important one. I wanted to fly through a cloud so badly, see all the magic going on inside, and watch it bounce off the nose of the airplane like a stray beachball bouncing off a shade umbrella. This was going to be amazing.

At the terminal, my stomach was filled with butterflies and my toes were barely touching the jetway as I walked onto the plane.

I sat down, buckled up and looked out the window. Turns out, those windows are small and I was over the wing — a bit of a bummer — but eventually we were in the air. Except for some turbulence, the flight was uneventful.

When I saw some clouds outside, I was a ball of bottled-up energy waiting for us to get there. As the plane entered the cloud, I saw it just looked foggy and was supremely let down. But I had a feeling it looked different from the pilot's perspective; it had to. It must have been majestic and awe-inspiring — and I dare say, I was right.

A pilot of a Cessna Citation II caught this video as he touched down in Miami following a flight from Tampa. The short video is brilliant to watch, as we get a view that usually only pilots or the extremely wealthy get to experience. The actual touchdown is very cool, but it's that moment the pilot breaches the clouds that got me. It was the mystical journey of traveling from an unseen world to an inhabited one; going from the serene to the chaotic; traversing the actual horizon and getting a peek into the other side.

Young John knew his dad, and even his personal experience of what it was like to fly through a cloud was wrong. I'm happy adult John held onto some of that immature and innocent hope because now I know I was right.