Post #283,308
4/29/07 5:17:37 AM
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One for Mikey.. er, mmoffitt
[link|http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/04/26/aviation/index.html?source=newsletter| Would-be pilots grounded by wives!] {chortle} Roger to reality. Today's New York Times [link|http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/fashion/26pilot.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th| piece] about the declining popularity of private flying has got to be one of the weirdest pieces of human-interest journalism of 2007. The synopsis on the Fashion & Style page should have tipped me off to the sociological thumb sucking to follow: "The Federal Aviation Administration reports that the number of private pilots is down. Why? Ask the two-income family."
Say what?
Striking a nostalgic note about the piloting dreams of "every boy," the article asserts that the private aviation industry is "withering, and a bit of Americana is slipping away, along with a bit of freedom and joy" because "Walter Mitty doesn't want to fly anymore." The Times might as well have called Mitty a pussy-whipped, potbellied sop who can't choose his own hobbies anymore because his wife is commandeering the weekend schedule and the disposable income. After all too briefly suggesting that part of the reason may be the well-documented dangers of private plane flying and our society's increasing risk aversion, the article begins its downward spiral: Wives are keeping guys grounded.
"Another [reason] is the shift of income and family decision-making to women. Industry leaders try hard not to sound like a former president of Harvard and attribute anything to innate skill, but women simply do not take up flying as frequently as men do.
"'There's been a big sociological and psychological change in the families of today, in where the discretionary dollars go,' said Phil Boyer, president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. When the husband told the stay-at-home mom of the 1950s that he was going to spend a Saturday afternoon taking flying lessons, she acquiesced, he said. Today, he said, in a two-income family, she is more likely to say: 'You are not. That's your day to take Johnny to the soccer game, and what the heck are you doing spending our hard-earned money on flying lessons?'"
[. . .] 13 Brownie points for ID of -
ka-pock'eta pock'eta pock'eta pock'eta ...
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Post #283,343
4/29/07 10:15:35 PM
8/21/07 5:58:17 AM
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That's not why I quit
has to do with
1) Congestion - I learned to fly in rural New Mexico. Flying was fun, casual, wide open spaces. Even ABQ INTL was easy to get in and out of. In Denver, the DIA control area overlies nearly the entire metro area - the control burden is high, and the traffic at local airports so bad that on a Saturady I'll have burned half an hour of engine time waiting in line to take off. Meanwhile, once airborne, you spend all your time taking orders from the tower.
2) Planes cost too much and don't offer adequate utility for the price. We're still stuck with 1940's technology.
3) Lack of affordable destinations and insurmountable logistical issues once arriving. In NM, most small airports had a beater car with the keys in it. You just borrow it to go into town and replace the gas. I haven't seen that in more developed areas.
Bottom line, flying isn't worth the money anymore. All the fun has been regulated out of it.
We posture as apostles of fair play, as good sportsmen, as professional knights-errant-- and we throw beer bottles at the umpire when he refuses to cheat for our side...We save the black-and-tan republics from their native [statesmen]--and flood them with "deserving" democrats of our own. We deafen the world with our whoops for liberty--and submit to laws that destroy our most sacred rights...We play policeman and Sunday-school superintendent to half of Christendom--and lynch a darky every two days in our own backyard.
H.L. Mencken, 1914
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Post #283,396
4/30/07 1:20:29 PM
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I call B.S.
...most small airports had a beater car with the keys in it. You just borrow it to go into town and replace the gas. I haven't seen that in more developed areas.
Have you looked at an AOPA Airport Directory in the past 5 years? Is Corona, CA "developed" enough? They have a courtesy car and van. How about Hawthorne, CA? They've got a courtesy car, too. And it's not just California. There are a *TON* of places that have courtesy cars. Most of the fields I've flown into still have them and while the number of Class E & G airports is going down, there are still a lot of them left and the majority of them have courtesy cars.
Your other points are well taken. If you live in a large, urban area and you're foolish enough to hangar your piston aircraft at a controlled field, then yeah, GA can suck. More precisely, all the controls the FAA has come up with "to keep us safe" suck and they're going to get worse. I'm absolutely convinced that the FAA/DHS duo from hell will not be happy until there is no more uncontrolled flight in the entire country.
I'm going to read the article Ashton wrote now, but Boyer's quote above is on mark in my view. Saturday and Sunday was beautiful up here. Where'd I spend Saturday? 6am - 4pm daughter's tennis tournament I hauled food and water for. 4pm-4:30pm take a daughter to work, 5pm-8pm running around with the other daughter. Sunday, 9am-10am polish the airplane. 10:30-4pm tennis with daughter again, 4:25pm - 6pm, took daughter to the mall to buy shoes for her prom. Got home at 7:30pm. So much for those 2 VFR days and that is exactly for the reason Boyer said. Wife was working nights Fri-Sun and was sleeping during the day, which left me to haul kids around. For me, I have *way* more weekends like the last one than I do free. And that definitely cuts into my flying.
bcnu,
Mikem
It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one might say, is to give an air of respectibility to these passions. -- Bertrand Russell
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Post #283,401
4/30/07 2:17:14 PM
8/21/07 6:00:55 AM
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Well you could say the same about boats
Not enough hours to get on the water with family obligations.
And I admit that I'm comparing NM to Denver area - which is a mother of a control area that claims everything over to the mountains the small planes can't fly over plus an hour's drive north and south of the city and two hours drive east. Kinda locks one out.
I also used to fly at Pontiac in Mich - that was a controlled field that wasn't too awful busy. But I think that has changed from what I hear.
We posture as apostles of fair play, as good sportsmen, as professional knights-errant-- and we throw beer bottles at the umpire when he refuses to cheat for our side...We save the black-and-tan republics from their native [statesmen]--and flood them with "deserving" democrats of our own. We deafen the world with our whoops for liberty--and submit to laws that destroy our most sacred rights...We play policeman and Sunday-school superintendent to half of Christendom--and lynch a darky every two days in our own backyard.
H.L. Mencken, 1914
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Post #283,406
4/30/07 2:56:33 PM
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And it's going to stay stuck in the '40s
It got so every time a GA aircraft crashed the manufacturer was sued for some imagined defect. Any innovation just means more lawsuits so why do it?
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #283,398
4/30/07 1:45:48 PM
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Thanks. That as a good read. But a big point was missed.
It's been four or five years ago since I said this in response to some one asking me why I thought GA was dying. I said, "Young people today prefer virtual life to the genuine article. Why go to the airport and fly a real two place piston airplane when you can sit on your couch at home, eating Cheetos and fly a 747 from New York to Paris all with your thumbs." I remember riding my bike to the airport as a tot, dreaming of the day I'd get the chance to fly. I spent hours of my youth prone in my backyard staring up at the sky and watching small aircraft fly overhead. I never thought I'd ever have enough money to do it, and it took me until after my 40th birthday to start, but I am extremely happy I did.
GA's not going to survive if the 40+ crowd forms the only student pilot base. And the generations following the 40+ crowd are completely devoid of imagination, a desire to lead a genuine life or anything that doesn't involve spending hour upon hour of mindlessly staring into some sort of video display. Not to put too fine a point on it, but even Todd's reply suggests that "there just isn't enough new fangled electronic gizmos" in GA aircraft to make flying appealing. We.are.finished.
bcnu,
Mikem
It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one might say, is to give an air of respectibility to these passions. -- Bertrand Russell
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Post #283,402
4/30/07 2:18:42 PM
8/21/07 6:00:56 AM
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Its not the gizmos - its price per thrill
and I think skiing is dying for the same reason. I can't afford to go anymore.
We posture as apostles of fair play, as good sportsmen, as professional knights-errant-- and we throw beer bottles at the umpire when he refuses to cheat for our side...We save the black-and-tan republics from their native [statesmen]--and flood them with "deserving" democrats of our own. We deafen the world with our whoops for liberty--and submit to laws that destroy our most sacred rights...We play policeman and Sunday-school superintendent to half of Christendom--and lynch a darky every two days in our own backyard.
H.L. Mencken, 1914
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Post #283,407
4/30/07 3:26:38 PM
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Thank $diety that guitar is still reasonably priced.
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Post #283,415
4/30/07 4:48:44 PM
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Believe me, I feel that pain. ;0(
Even in my lowly 172 at 8 gallons/hour, with AvGas between $4.50 and $5.00 it makes you hesitate to fly - even if you can find the time. Not that long ago I was spending a lot more on hangar rent ($140/month) than fuel. Now, it's completely reversed and up here where a VFR day is a rarity, I only fly about 70 hours/year.
I seriously do not know how Cessna can sell any new 172's. At a starting price of $160,000, who can buy them?
bcnu,
Mikem
It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one might say, is to give an air of respectibility to these passions. -- Bertrand Russell
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Post #283,405
4/30/07 2:52:19 PM
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Gee, thanks. :P
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Post #283,408
4/30/07 3:38:50 PM
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My thoughts
- Maybe GA can survive (but not flourish) with 40+. I recall a talk about a symphony. They were concerned that the average season ticket holder was 50+ years old. So they tried, unsuccessfully, to lower the age. They finally realized that the average age stayed about the same - there was a certain age at which people who loved classical music had the time and money to support them.
- But if we don't "kill the lawyers" (and bureaucrats), then the future of GA is dim (e.g. Andrew's comment, and below):
- affordable acrobatic aircraft would really put the thrills back in, but is impractical until we put the lawyers back into their cage (see the example of skateboard parks).
--Tony
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Post #283,442
4/30/07 7:24:09 PM
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Yes, and 'virtual' is not confined merely to transistorized
'games', ersatz for ever doing/trying anything with an actual risk (of failure.)
General Aviation is a ways down the list, in priority - but the administration of it is apt to be done by someone who's never flown in a light plane - why, it's Admin Policy that you'd be dangerous if you knew anything.
*Virtual* now comes to replace, rather than supplant -- the difficult work of assembling credible information about many difficult topics. Like, take
'Iraq' - -
I recall, from amidst too-many recent rehashes of the Quagmire, an author who pinned down the er, sourcebook for imagining that "Torture! (especially: sexual humiliation) could work on 'Muslim men'" - the very model for the adoring office drones like Alberto, employed as justification for Abu and all the rest..
It derived from a '72,3? psych treatise (whose title I scribbled somewhere) which, if read in haste, can seem to suggest this 'as a policy' until..
until you get to the part about: except that [~] "..you will also assure that the families of each tortured shall henceforth kill as many of you as they can find.."
The shallow, sallow neoconmen have proven that transistorized gaming for merely the usual escape from the daily toxins of a moribund society.. is trivial -- you can also construct a fantasy world for political purposes: not from your experience of a planet-full of cultures + the maturity to have some idea of their exceedingly complex interactions, to date -
Simply, sell your fantasy with a few What-If?s whispered into the shell-likes of a Shrub - ever so malleable to grandiose plans, as only a one possessed-of a special internal deity Will Believe, uncritically. [His Legacy\ufffd] - and this-all Will Be.
(Think Speer - architect for the Fuehrer's Bigger-than-'man' Berlin for The Next Thousand Years. An ugly, massive intimidating construct, had it ever come to be.)
ie. it does seem to be coming True:
The now widespread experience of What-if games, launched as recreation - appear also to have facilitated the creation of more effective propaganda by the scurrilous: wherever they can count on an uncritical/incompetent audience. Like say, ____
Death via the imaginings about All Those'God'(s) proves - how much more motivated by fantasy, are our fellow inmates. We kill from allegory! every day.
ie.
Fly while you can.
..Everybody else is out shopping, or dreaming about when they can, next.
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