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To really understand what it was like to fly back when flight was new, you have to take to the air in a historic plane.

“I’ve been on two, a WWII-era B-17 Flying Fortress, and then last week, a 1928 Ford Tri-Motor passenger plane,” said John Coffelt, editor of The Tullahoma News’ sister paper, The Manchester Times after he took a short flight on the 1928 plane this past Saturday at Tullahoma Airport.

“I know, right? Wow, a passenger plane? But, no, really that little Ford offered more of a visceral flight experience than the big B-17 with her cash of .50 caliber machine guns.”

Coffelt said you can feel it deep down when the motors turn over on the historic aircraft, making it a multi-sensory event.

“Upon startup in the Tri-Motor, you experience those three 420 horsepower rotary engines’ vibration deep in your soul,” Coffelt said. “Taxing to the runway feels quick and seamless, but when the pilot throttles up, the sound is straight from the 1920s.

For my fellow passenger, William Lee, of Tullahoma, who learned of the flight from the paper, it’s also about nostalgia.

“He said he’s been on flights before, the scenery is all the same, but in the Tri-Motor you see it in art deco style,” Coffelt recalled. “It’s the lap of luxury at the time. First class was literally the whole cabin, all 10 of us.”

Coffelt said the experience gave him a glimpse into aviation in the 1920s when flight was just taking flight.

“All in all, to touch history is to appreciate the harrowing daring of what it was to just be passenger in pioneering aviation,” Coffelt noted.