When these pilots take off, a $100 burger is the destination

Whenever Ryan LaPointe is hungry for flying time in his plane, he goes for a $100 hamburger.

Or whatever’s on the menu at his destination.

LaPointe has flown to Port Townsend for pie at the Spruce Goose Cafe, to Tacoma for pizza at The Hub, and to Arlington for bacon and eggs from Ellie’s at the Airport. He’s even flown 142 miles, from Bremerton to Portland, Oregon, just for donuts.

On a recent Saturday, he flew over to Langley for his favorite breakfast at Mukilteo Coffee Roasters.

The flights in his restored 1955 Piper PA-16 Clipper aren’t cheap, but that doesn’t bother him.

“You don’t look at the cost,” said LaPointe, a Bremerton resident who graduated from Marysville-Pilchuck High School in 2000. “You scrape it together because you love it.”

It’s a pastime known as the “$100 hamburger,” which is aviation slang for a trip that involves flying a short distance (less than two hours), eating at a restaurant near the runway, then flying home. The $100 refers to the approximate cost of flying round-trip. And no, pilots don’t always order a burger.

For LaPointe, 37, it’s the perfect excuse to fly.

He’s not the only pilot willing to take off for a bite. Visit a restaurant near an airport on any given weekend, and there’s sure to be a group of pilots huddled around a table, swapping stories.

The tight-knit nature of the flying community is one of the reasons Trisa Jackson, 43, of Gig Harbor, fell in love with aviation. In a time when social media often replaces authentic personal interactions, pilots love a good face-to-face conversation, she said.

“The thing about this community is that it brings people together you wouldn’t normally run into,” said Jackson, a financial adviser with Bankers Life. “Everybody is on an equal playing field. It’s sort of like a lost art form.”

LaPointe added, “I’ve sat down with somebody who made millions of dollars, and right next to him was somebody who was scraping money together on Craigslist.”

LaPointe often makes flight plans with Jackson and another friend, Dan Tarasievich, 70, of Arlington. When the weather’s nice, their Saturday-morning ritual starts at Tarasievich’s lounge-like hangar at Arlington Airport.

They’ll spend some time catching up before climbing into their planes’ cockpits; Tarasievich owns a 2017 Carbon Cub EX-2, while Jackson rents a Cessna 172. They like to get airborne before the skies become too crowded, and fly in formation on the way to their $100 hamburger destination.

When they visit Mukilteo Coffee Roasters near Whidbey Airpark in Langley, they all order the “Blues Man” benedict, made with baked cheddar biscuits, poached eggs and bacon-sausage gravy.

Pilots typically fly in groups of three or four, but Gary Smith, owner of Mukilteo Coffee Roasters, has seen as many as 27 pilots gather to eat breakfast at his cafe. He’s posted a welcome sign on the pathway from the runway to the cafe.

Tarasievich, a former professional skydiver who owns an emergency parachute business called Para-Phernalia Inc. in Arlington, has taken the $100 hamburger trip to restaurants in Puyallup, Friday Harbor and Orcas Island. Sometimes he’ll fly with his significant other to Mukilteo Coffee Roasters for breakfast, then to Port Townsend for lunch and back to Arlington for dinner.

He’s even flown to the Langley cafe just to a pick up a bag of coffee beans. His excuse for that $100 hamburger?

“You can’t beat the views,” he said.

LaPointe says it costs about $80 to fuel up his plane for the round trip from Arlington to Langley and Port Townsend.

But Tarasievich says the real cost is higher.

“It should probably be called the $500 hamburger,” he said. “It’s a poke at ourselves. Flying is not cheap. It’s not as expensive as golf, though.”

LaPointe sees it this way: “I look at it like how people buy an expensive boat to go out fishing for salmon. It’s not necessarily that you’re doing it for the meal. It’s the whole experience. You’re taking your plane out, you’re hanging out with friends. It’s not just driving to Denny’s and getting a Grand Slam.”

LaPointe flies nearly every weekend, and sometimes on his commute to Seattle. He works two jobs — one as a systems engineer for Zillow and another as a pilot for Full Throttle Aviation — just so he can support his hobby. He says one of his favorite things is to fly his wife and child to Orcas Island for lunch, then to Seattle for dinner.

“To me, flying is really freeing,” LaPointe said. “You don’t have time to focus on the daily grind and all the stress of your normal life. When you’re flying, you’re just in the moment. You can go anywhere you want, as high as you want, as low as you want. It’s just your own little world.

“I can’t imagine a life without flying.”

Washington North Coast Magazine

This article is featured in the summer issue of Washington North Coast Magazine, a supplement of The Daily Herald. Explore Snohomish and Island counties with each quarterly magazine. Each issue is $3.99. Subscribe to receive all four editions for $14 per year. Call 425-339-3200 or go to www.washingtonnorthcoast.com for more information.