The message was the work of uni student Greggor Hines, who was flying a Piper Cherokee on Tuesday.
He told the Washingtonian he got the idea to "express how he felt" while he was already in the sky for the leisurely flight.
"We'd just got a new compass in the aeroplane and I just had to check it out somehow," he said.
Greggor, who has been flying since he was aged nine and has a private pilot's licence, said it took him about two hours to spell out the message that spanned about 191 nautical miles.
And his choice of phrase has won him plenty of praise on Twitter and Facebook, where it went viral after being shared by FlightRadar24.
The coronavirus pandemic has inspired a range of messages from pilots.
Last week, an Icelandair pilot has spread a message of positivity to the country's healthcare workers by drawing a heart flight path in the sky above the capital, Reykjavik.
Over Easter, Flightradar24 shared images of flight paths that two pilots had taken over Germany, showing outlines of a bunny.
And in March, an Austrian pilot took to the sky to spell out the words "stay home" on the radar, while another pilot drew a thumbs-up sign above Hungary to express appreciation for healthcare professionals fighting COVID-19.
