Flying offers a majestic escape from overcrowded highways jammed up with cars, trucks, and sturdy uncles giving piggyback rides. Fly over spectacular New Mexico landscape with today’s Groupon: for $89, you get a 30-minute glider ride at Sundance Aviation, located in Moriarty (a $151 value). Sky riders can upgrade to 45-minute rides for an additional $30.
Sundance Aviation founder and experienced glider Rick Kohler leads a skyborne staff of accomplished pilots as they spirit passengers out of Moriarty Municipal Airport to altitudes of up to 18,000 feet. A small plane lifts the wafting vessel into the air before it begins its solo coasting over the picturesque New Mexico dessert. Riders can ascend in the high-performance Grob 103 fiberglass glider. The soaring machines ride thermal air columns to achieve unprecedented hang time, a technique favored by NBA players until it was outlawed in 2002, and pilots hand off the cockpit controls to riders for a few minutes of experimental aeronauting. Call one week ahead to schedule a flight.
Sundance Aviation
At Sundance Aviation, shimmering fiberglass gliders soar up to 18,000 feet above see level as they cruise over the New Mexico desert. Pilots navigate gliders such as the modern fiberglass Grob 103 high above the air, riding thermal in the summer and mountain wave lifts in the winter. Pilots offer easy-going, scenic tours as well as more acrobatic flights that take passengers on a series of multiple loops, wing-overs, chandelles, and deep stalls.