Hang On...

Welcome to another lengthy edition of:

Laura's Wandering Thoughts

First comes Kaylee. She woke up cranky, came home from school cranky, went to gymnastics cranky, and came out hopping up and down and red-faced. I have not seen her that excited more than a handful of times in her life. She passed Gymnastics Level One today and is officially in Level Two! Kaylee isn't really "behind", but I pulled her out for a year when she wouldn't listen to her teacher (after being warned about what would happen), and she lost last year to being a zombie at all her after school activities thanks to her issues with school. It hasn't been until these last maybe four or five months that she's really buckled down on it, and today it paid off. The first thing she did was call her Daddy to tell him, then she had to call her cousins to tell them too. She wanted to call all her grandparents too, but she got tired and had to eat instead. :) She was dancing around in circles yelling "I'm in Level Two-oo! I'm in Level Two-oo!" I'm proud of her! She gets her Certificate tomorrow, so I'll take a picture of her with it to post. She's so excited. :)

I was going to go to an "Experimental Aircraft Association/EAA" meeting tonight at Nathan's hangar to get out of the house, have some free food, listen to airplane stuff, hang out with friends, all that good stuff, but Kaylee didn't want to go and I figured I wouldn't make her this time. There will be enough times she doesn't have a choice that I won't ruin her Happy Level Two Day with an airport meeting with a bunch of old (to her, not literally old, well, some of 'em anyway) male (present company excluded) pilots. Maybe I can get Steve to bring me home some of the snacks. ;)

In case you hadn't heard of it yet, there is a new Indiana law that provides a new consumer right called a "security freeze". This keeps anyone from accessing your credit report without your explicit say so and personal pin number. Basically it makes it impossible for an Identity Thief to take out any form of credit in your name regardless of what personal information they have, including social security number, because the creditors will not be able to access your credit report. The three credit agencies all have online filing forms in which to do this, and it's free of charge for anyone interested...email me and I can send you a link.

I am on Facebook. Yeah, I know. I'm only on there because some of my friends are more active there and they don't have blogs that they keep up on (cough) and so this was a way I could keep up with them a little more. But I kind of went into Facebook kicking, because it just seemed like something more for...teenagers...or something. Yesterday I caved and realized I get a kick out of reading up on how everyone is doing, seeing the latest pictures and videos, that it's real easy to send a little shout out to a friend and say "hey", or pass on info. And I started laughing when I realized that I was in a Poke War with my friend. And she just threw an Opie snowball at me so I threw a yellow snowball back at her. And that's seriously-I-hate-to-admit-that-in-public goofball-ish. And yet I just poked her back anyway. Which goes to prove, this site is indeed for teenagers. ;)

I was reading a professional pilot web board for the first time, just skimming around, and I found a thread that was about corporate and airline pilots and flight crews and what famous passengers they'd had on board, and how those famous passengers had behaved, what they were like in person, etc. Now that was 8 pages of slightly interesting. :) There was almost no disagreement-how a person was with one crew was how they were with others too, so you can't exactly call it a "bad" day. I wasn't surprised by most of it. The majority of "A" Level celebrities were very patient, quiet, unassuming, and fine. The "B" and below level celebrities were the ones who were most often the jerks/jerkettes with the huge egos and the rude demands and the "Don't you know who I am???" rants at crews. Like people who were on "Big Brother" or something. Oh, and one of the women from "What Not To Wear" was completely condescending, arrogant, demanding, and had a body guard stand in front of her seat so nobody could come up to her, etc. Meanwhile people like Robin Williams and Prince William and Muhammad Ali were gracious, talking to crews and pilots, etc. The one that surprised me was Pamela Anderson. Of all people. I would have bet money she'd be one of the jerkettes, but I'd have lost my money. Several people all said that she was very kind, polite and sweet to them. On second thought, I wonder if they were all men. I mean, really, Pam Anderson?? ;) The one that surprised me in the opposite direction was Nicole Kidman. I would have thought she would have been one to have good manners and class, but apparently she was quite haughty and rude. The general rule seems to be, unsurprisingly, about class, not money or celebrity status. People on "Big Brother" (I can't think of the other shows off hand but same thing) or many rock bands and so forth are not exactly known for their dignity and class to start with, so the fact that they get a little notice and get arrogant about it isn't exactly a shock. The fact that a Prince (actually, every royal family member from Arabs to English) and long-time high-level celebs showed good manners, pleasant attitudes and patience is not a shock either.

I can attest on a teeny level that when you fly around passengers for hire, you hear and see things that can be pretty interesting, and many times, just like with a taxi driver, they don't really think of you as actually there. I've even had a few people be pretty arrogant and condescending to me as their pilot, acting like big shots. I'm sorry my friend, but you are being flown around in a little twin by...Me. Do you really think you're all that special? ;) And do you really think you want to irritate the person who has control of your...comfort...for the next several hours? ;)

(Yes, of course I was a professional at all times, and treated all clients politely and repectfully regardless of their treatment of me. End Disclaimer. :))

Another group of pilots was talking about how the number of pilots is dwindling along with the increased regulation and difficulties in affordability, availability, etc. One man said the following which made me nod, anyway, because that kind of non-fenced-off, open environment is what we are trying to keep at Glenndale:

"We need to be accommodating of people who love aviation. As pilots, passengers and observers. Since 9/11 we've fenced off airports and made aviation unfriendly to the public. I became a pilot in 1980 because I was able to ride my bike to the airport and eat lunch on the park bench next to the ramp. I hung out long enough to attract the attention of a pilot who saw my interest and he put me together with an instructor who gave me an intro flight for 20 bucks. When does that happen anymore? Especially in urban areas. We've gone and made aviation unapproachable. No wonder kids are spending all their time playing World of Warcraft instead. Figure out a way to let the public back near the airplanes and you'll get more pilots."

So on to corporate jets. This article came out today (I shortened it for blog purposes.)

General Motors was forced to terminate 49 employees from its now-eliminated corporate air operations department as one of the terms for winning emergency funding from Congress. All seven aircraft in the GM fleet are parked at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport waiting to be sold. All of the aircraft are leased; however, they can’t be returned to the financing companies without stiff penalties. GM has been unable to sell the aircraft, but corporate executives are all flying on commercial flights. GM, Ford, and Chrysler were required to get rid of their corporate flight departments as a condition to receive the funds. Still other companies, such as Canada-based Nortel Networks Corp. now operating under bankruptcy protection laws, have joined in dumping corporate flight departments.

This is having a bigger negative impact on people than you'd think. Thousands and thousands of employees are now out of work at aircraft manufacturing companies, businesses are going under, high-paid executives are now wasting an entire day standing in security and check-in lines. People think of airplanes as luxuries, but take out all jobs tied in with aviation and you have a pretty big hole. Another gentleman put it this way, which I also nodded to:

"This is nothing more than Public Relations. Congress Critters know that Joe Citizen feels that private jets are simply an extravagant luxury. By making the sale of the jets a condition of the bailout, those congress critters can tell Joe Idiot Citizen, 'We got tough on the execs, eliminating perks like private jets' and make people feel all warm and fuzzy about it, when in reality all they did was make those same execs less productive, cost 49 people their jobs in one place today, contributed to more people losing their jobs at Cessna, Bombardier, etc., and eliminate the state and local revenue from landing fees/fuel taxes for those jets, just to start."

I am concerned about aviation. Cessna, Piper, Eclipse (who just furloughed 800 people today), Cirrus, Beechcraft, all the major companies have had massive layoffs as general aviation dropped, and now even worse layoffs as corporate airplane sales have tanked. And on the regulatory end of it, for now I can still hop into a little two-seat airplane and take off when I want and go where I want (mostly) and do what I want, just like people can do in their cars, just like we should all be able to do in a supposedly free country. But we are headed for European-style General Aviation, and if that happens, some day my book may have to be "How I Used To Be Able To Do It".

On a funny note, if the local newspaper rag would publish my letters, I'd have another point to add. In what can only be defined as pure irony, the Chrysler shuttle has had to land at Kokomo airport more than once now because Grissom was closed. Grissom is still a Private Base, and as I said in the letter they wouldn't publish, is not going to fit the bill for corporate aviation's needs. (The guy from the paper couldn't stop expressing his insistence that Grissom was THE answer and that Kokomo was unnecessary...as if he has any idea how many millions of dollars come into Kokomo thanks to that little airport, or how Grissom works, or much about flying at all in fact, contrary to his assertions.) Anyway, I got a smirk out of that anyway.

And now that I have made up for days' worth of short posts with one big long one that I bet Steve skims along with everyone else, which is fine with me since "only children" are used to and sometimes prefer just talking to themselves, ;), I need dinner and to get ready for tomorrow, which other than a couple hours break at Glenndale for fried chicken Friday lunch, is going to be busy!