During the night of 14 to 15 July 2011, two German teachers flew on board the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, for the first time. Wolfgang Viesser from the Christoph-Probst Gymnasium in Munich and Jörg Trebs from the Thomas-Mann Oberschule in Berlin were selected to join a team from the German SOFIA Institute (DSI), the University of Stuttgart and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to experience first-hand precisely how 'live' research on SOFIA is conducted at an altitude of 14 kilometres.