The word “Sensei” in Japanese means “teacher” or “doctor.” For instance, Lu Xun wrote the famous essay “Mr. Fujino,” reminiscing about Mr. Fujino, who taught him in Sendai.

The Mr. Ozawa introduced here is my wife’s university professor. He is 80 years old this year, but he is in excellent health. He plays tennis four times a week and looks to be only about 60 or 70. Mr. Ozawa is a senior aviation enthusiast. Recently, I saw his collection of flight logs and felt it was necessary to record them.

We know that many aviation enthusiasts hand a flight log to the flight attendants after boarding, hoping the pilot will record the navigation data as a souvenir. Since the 1970s, the old gentleman has designed these materials for every flight he took, with a unique design for each flight. It shows great care and dedication, which I deeply admire. Of course, the response from different airlines varies. Pilots from airlines with better service, such as British Airways or Singapore Airlines, sometimes gave him the flight data directly; according to him, the attitude of JAL (Japan Airlines) was surprisingly the worst, giving him the least amount of information, which was quite unexpected.

Mr. Ozawa has too many flight records, so I just took a few photos with my iPhone that day. Let me share two of them with you first.

Below is the record for Flight CAAC 4101 on August 2, 1985, from Chengdu to Beijing. The aircraft type was a Boeing 707, registration number 2410. Unfortunately, the writing on the paper doesn’t look like it was written by the pilot; it was likely written by the cabin crew. At that time, Mr. Ozawa was probably returning from Tibet, so the log was designed using Tibetan script. I found a photo of this aircraft online: Boeing 707-3J6C, B-2410, CAAC (CA / CCA), Engines: JT3D-7: This aircraft entered service on November 12, 1973. It is a 707-320B model equipped with the more powerful JT3D-7 engines, indicating it was a relatively late variant. Later, the aircraft belonged to China Southwest Airlines and served until May 1998. Afterward, it seemingly used the registration numbers B-513L and A6-ZYD (Flying Dolphin Airline of the UAE, serving until 2004). Upon retirement, the aircraft registered as B-2410 was reportedly the last Boeing 707 in mainland China. Furthermore, I saw here that “In 1998, the last Boeing 707 (B-2410) engaged in route transport on the mainland scraped its wing on the ground while landing at Lhasa Airport, and the aircraft was written off.”

Let’s look at a more recent one, the MU2461 flight on China Eastern Airlines from Xi’an to Urumqi on July 7, 2013. This time, he was lucky enough to get a record written by the Captain: Flight Distance: 1215 nautical miles, Cruising Altitude: 10,400 meters, Cruising Speed: Mach 0.78, Total Passengers: 145, Flight Time: 3 hours 15 minutes, V1 145 knots, V2 148 knots, Vr 154 knots, TOA minus 8 degrees. The aircraft type was a Boeing 737, but unfortunately, the registration number wasn’t kept, which is a slight pity. However, obtaining the Captain’s signature—“Zhang Weiguo”—is still very precious.

I think if we could record all of Mr. Ozawa’s flight logs, it would probably be enough to write a book.