Thank you both for your comments.
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I always use auto exposure settings with my camera - but then am also always riding the exposure compenstation dial. I simply look at the screen on the back of my camera after taking a shot and if needed apply plus or minus compensation to get the look I want.
I don't want you to get the impression that what you see above is what comes out of my camera. All of my photographic images are processed and enhanced to get the artistic value I want from them. I saw the way that I wanted to go with the shot looking like a sunset on a landscape - and then used my darkroom toolkit to mask and adjust contrast levels and insensify the colouring to my taste.
One problem with flight shots - is that the window I am shooting through is dirty and scratched and layers thick - - - cutting down on contrast and softening the shot I have captured and incuring flare and reflections. So to my eye looking out the window, this scene looked far more intense than what came out of the camera. What I saw in my mind, is what I have brought back with the darkroom work - and have then gone a little farther strictly for the artistic value in order to create wall art that captures people's imaginations.
The base image has to be there though. A brightly exposed capture would not have allowed for the processing that I used to get the result I wanted. Good composition with the sun off to the side and the elements in the frame balanced, needed to be there. So you can see where I started, I am including this shot as I photographed it - that shows it without cropping or processing (I don't generally show original frames - but will this time for educational purposes):
