Pilot flew girlfriend over Kansas for 2 hours — when she checked the flight radar, she saw a 4-word question

Proposals come in all forms — while some take place in restaurants, others unfold in parks, at the end of a tiresome hike, or even at a pristine beach. However, some go far beyond roses and candles, striving hard to convey the intensity of their emotion. When a pilot in Kansas decided to propose to his girlfriend, he took his love to the skies — literally. What followed was a high-altitude message, a carefully mapped route, and a very surprised fiancée watching it unfold in real time.

Terry Williamson had been dating Taylor Burcham for two years. On April 9, he decided to turn that relationship into something permanent using the flight path of his Bonanza P-35 aircraft. Over the skies of Pratt, Kansas, Williamson spelled out five words in cursive, "Will you marry me, Taylor?" The message took nearly two hours to form and was visible on flight tracking apps. "I wanted to do something different, something that nobody else has done," Williamson told Fox Weather. He had seen other skywritten proposals online, but most used only two words. His plan required sharp turns and close timing to form the entire question — something he admits was physically intense.

"After about the middle of the second word, I found out why they only do two words. I felt like I was going to get sick. There was a lot of G’s, a lot of turns, and it was very strenuous. It was really rough but definitely worth it," he told local news channel Kake News. Unaware of the plan, Burcham was working her shift at a local coffee shop when she saw the message. She regularly checks flight radar when Williamson is in the air, just to make sure he’s safe, but what she saw that day was unlike anything she could have expected. She said, "I was pretty surprised!" The couple shares a love for flying, which made the gesture even more meaningful. "Aviation has always played an important role in our relationship," Burcham told CBS affiliate KWCH.

Though the couple hasn’t set a wedding date yet, they’ve already talked about including aviation in the ceremony. "Of course, I did say yes," Burcham said, smiling. Williamson’s proposal might have tested his endurance, but it set a new standard for what it means to go above and beyond — or in this case, 7,500 feet above. Williamson’s flight path might have taken two hours to complete, but he’s not the only one who mapped his love across the sky. In another story, a man in Japan went even further. In 2008, Yasushi "Yassan" Takahashi spent six months traveling 4,451 miles across the country to ask for his girlfriend's hand in marriage.

Yassan used GPS tracking to plan and record his route across Japan. The result, when viewed on Google Earth, was a massive message that spelled out "Marry Me" along with a heart. He quit his job to make it happen, starting in Hokkaido and ending in Kagoshima, then revealed the finished map to his girlfriend, Natsuki. She said yes. Yassan’s journey later earned him a Guinness World Record for the largest GPS drawing in history and launched a new chapter in his life as a professional GPS artist. To date, he’s created more than 1,400 digital artworks across 24 countries.