Future of GA

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A friend recently wrote to me:
>When I observe the audience members of recent AOPA sponsored flight safety seminars, I see old, balding/grey-haired white men with just a smattering of lovely ladies. Where are the young pilots to replace us old geezers?

Here’s what I replied:
When I attended a safety talk last year I had similar thoughts. It’s sort of depressing. I was one of the youngest pilots in the audience of about 400 ppl. – And I’m 41!

My personal answer to that question is: they ain’t coming. The current pilot population won’t be replaced. No AOPA pep talk can change that. Not even LSAs have changed the equation.
My only hope for a large influx of new pilots is from complete “cockpit automation” when people look at GA again as (expensive but usable) self-transportation. In my vision the airplane is completely operated remotely with pilots on request that login to your plane from remote sites – just as drone pilots do. This would be to handle the tricky decision making situations. The common mode of operation would be 100% automated flight in the ATC system. You file a flight plan request, show up at your airplane, sit down, hit the start button and wait until you arrive. That vision is technically probably 10 years out, and might never happen because the government is involved and NextGen doesn’t look so hot at this point. But if a modern company like Google catches on, it might happen much faster. In technology you never know.

Bare that, the piston GA as we know it will die. We’ll come down from a 600k pilot’s population to something like 1/10th of it. That’s just how prohibitively expensive flying has become. And the general public’s opinion about GA isn’t exactly helping either. Nor does our safety record. (There are two answers to improving the safety record IMO: 1) recurring training like required for type ratings in chapter 135 operations -> I use the Mu-2 requirements imposed by the FAA a couple of years ago to improve the safety record as a compelling argument. And do BFRs annually with a FAA assigned instructor (not the one you already flew the last time), but make the test so that you can’t fail – it’s a learning opportunity. Train your weaknesses. If you’re insecure about 20kts cross wind landings, then that’s a good opportunity to work on it.
And secondly: Automation – as much as feasible, starting immediately: An autopilot should be mandatory in every IFR aircraft, all non-local flights with more than the pilot on board should require a flight plan or flight following at the minimum)

But there you have it. Younger people aren’t interested to GA. And the few that are, most of them can’t afford it.

Sad but true in the way I see the world.

Watch the Snails – by Jay Carpenter – (reposted with his permission)

thoughts, travel, USA, weather

Watch the Snails

By Jay Carpenter   – Fall 2009

 

The Thing

My all-time favorite science fiction movie is, “The Thing (From Outer Space)”, circa 1952.  I am NOT referring to the John Carpenter remake.  The original film still scares me today and I have seen it probably 50 times.  In the end, the creature from outer space is ultimately defeated.  However, all of the crewmembers of the polar ice station who killed the alien are wondering what will happen next.  Will there be more creatures?  I am thinking that an alien who possesses technology for space travel must certainly have GPS tracking on his way to our planet!

 

The closing line of the movie is delivered by Scotty, a newspaper reporter.  He relays to other reporters listening over a shortwave radio the story of their encounter with the terrible and mean alien being.  At the end he says, “Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!”

 

Shortly after this movie came out, there was a rash of UFOs sited all over the world.

 

The Drought Continues

About ten years ago, we were in a similar drought situation as we find ourselves today.  There was blistering heat, absolutely no rain and no forecast for rain.  My cousin Will Ed, who lives in Spicewood and studies Texas climate history says, “We are in a continuing long term drought, interrupted by occasional flooding.”  I think Will Ed is right.

 

Anyway, in the time of the last hard drought of the late 1990s, a TV news reporter gal was doing a story about the heat wave and the failure of local farmers’ crops.  She visited a small farm east of Austin and interviewed a farmer.  She asked the type of questions that try to milk out a “woe is me” response.  Although this farmer’s crops were certainly burnt beyond recognition, he was not dismayed.  In fact, he was smiling as he forecasted a large rain event in the near future, which would be good for the upcoming winter garden and provide sub moisture for next year’s crop.

 

When asked how he knew that rain was coming when every expert weather forecaster was preaching Armageddon, he replied slowly, “Whal . . . ya see them thar snails crawlin’ up the sides of ma barn?  (The camera zooms in to a close up of a dozen slugs crawling straight up the barn’s wood wall). That’s a shore sign that rain is comin’, and comin’ big!”

 

The news reporter, in a post wrap editorial, ridiculed the farmer’s home-spun weather forecasting technique.  She said that this type of lore is primitive and superstitious.  With perfect hair and a gleam in her eye, she made the farmer appear foolish and ignorant of the scientific method.  Her personal comments, dripping with sarcasm, were more lengthy than the actual report about the drought.

 

The next week it rained for eight days straight and we received over 10 inches of the blessed wet stuff.

 

I never did see the news reporter do a follow up on the farmer’s prediction. In fact, I have not seen that news lady at all, since that time.

 

This morning I saw two snails crawling up the side of my house.  I also saw a red sky at dawn while walking Molly, our miniature albino coyote (recently captured from the Chihuahuan Desert of the Big Bend).  “Red sky in morning, sailor take warning.”  Then I went inside and viewed a TV news report about a tropical storm in the Caribbean headed this way, perhaps developing into a hurricane.  OMG, I thought.  Could our present drought (the worst that Will Ed has ever seen in our area) be coming to an end?

 

It will most likely be “occasional flooding”, but I will take anything at this point.

 

Watch the snails . . . everywhere.  Keep looking.  KEEP WATCHING THE SNAILS!