Plane Conversations

I often feel “Lost” as I continuously review what is happening in the air transportation industry. So many people are stranded in time and place by the anxieties, harassment, and limitation the air transportation system.  It is only getting worse as airlines push in and pull out of markets with abandon disrupting the dreams and aspirations of millions of people with the stroke of keyboard.

Or, perhaps it is the holiday season now upon us that leads me along the nostalgic trail of family and friends who I miss so dearly. Or, it could be the recession that forces me to look outside my own community to achieve economic security in these difficult times. Meanwhile; social media technology increases my exposure to like minded people, new ideas, and a bewildering array of events and opportunities – many of which I can no longer access efficiently.

The easy thing to do would be to accomodate the situation and limit my goals and aspirations to that which others serve up to me on the platter of their choice.  I could simply give up and be content with my lot in life as determined by others.  I could dedicate my talent, education, and experience to lesser parochial tasks that happen along the jungle trail.

Or, I can seek the vulnerabilities of the forces that control my ability to travel.  I can exploit weaknesses in their business model and I can find others willing to join forces to bypass those externalities altogether.

I have chosen the latter and in the process, I have met some of the smartest, engaging, and interesting people that I could have imagined.  I no longer flash back to the past – I flash forward to the future.  That is the secret ingredient to never being stranded in the choices of others.

2012 will be the tipping point for many people. I believe that communities will begin to organize around the assets that government and corporations can no longer provide.  Communities will make the choices that determine their own future, sanctity, and preservation.  Self-organization will become the fabric of the social landscape.

My job it to show people that there is no reason why they cannot run their own airline; any where and any time they choose.

Knowledge is power.  It’s not what you know, but what you do with what you know that matters. 

Enter social media, web 2.0, wikinomics, the digital age, the Google era-whatever you would like to call it.  The power of this enormous infrastructure and way of life, the power of social media is the sharing of knowledge by wise leaders. 

Let me briefly explain–Google shares information, but it certainly isn’t wisdom.  On the other hand, your friend, who has been listening to a podcast about a certain subject for a year now, knows you are looking for a new job in a related industry.  He knows that the host of the podcast is great friends with a guy in that industry.  A tweet is sent with a link to the podcast… Knowledge has been applied.  Wisdom has been shared.  Now connections have been made.

Enter video.  YouTube is probably the most widely known video social media channel, but there are many.  Here is an example:

What did you see? Probably a lot of things.  Did you see an acrobatic flight from the “bird’s eye” view of the pilot? A pilot getting his first lesson could learn a lot about the cross check…looking outside at the wingtips to maintain attitude, back and forth, now forward at airspeed.  These are the kinds of things that can only be learned in real time.  It’s challenging, even for an experienced flight instructor to explain this inverted.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is video worth?

Did you see Johnny’s house in the early frames of the video, just to the far side of the brown field off the nose? How cool would it be for Johnny to see his house from that angle?! Even more exciting would be real time streaming video integrated into the flying video game on his HD TV.

Imagine a student pilot getting ready to go on his first cross-country flight.  The weather between here and the destination is forecasted to be VFR, but there is a slight chance it could deteriorate.  So he types in the web address for a new, video-based “Sky Maps” website, and sees that another pilot has just flown along that route.  By clicking on the airplane symbol on the “Sky Map,” a video is cued.  Student Pilot can now see the weather for himself, adding some knowledge to his decision-making process, painting a picture to supplement the weather forecast.

Did you see the weather off to the east in the video? Scientists could tap into a wealth of data to update meteorological models, validate predictions, understand these complex (and still quite mysterious) phenomena even better.

Did you see the turbulent airflow off of the upper wing? I didn’t either, but it won’t be long until a high-tech lens attachment the size of a dime gives Schleren photography capability to this portable video cameras.  In fact, the future holds a camera that looks wherever the pilot points it and captures images at any bandwidth in the spectrum of light.

One last application for the test pilots among us - the pilot was moving his head, large movements, and a lot of them, in other words, high frequency and high amplitude.  This data would certainly contribute to an understanding of the workload during this phase of flight.  At this point in the evolution of the technology, we don’t need six sigma certainty that it’s high workload.  We have a definitive qualitative understanding that it is.  The technology will mature, and the way we use it to collect quantitative measures of what has been previously subjectively evaluated should mature as well.

That’s what the future looks like…in HD.

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Photo by Mark Blanks

In just a few days, the aviation world will come together to experience the largest display of aeronautical hardware, services, and performances in North America at EAA’s annual AirVenture Oshkosh event. I have been blessed to attend AirVenture for the past two years and I now find myself sorely disappointed that I will not have the same opportunity this year. However, this provides me the perfect opportunity to reflect on my love of, some may say my addiction to, aviation and the way that I see others who experience the same passion of this singular activity.

I have attended many different airshows and have worked at an airport for most of my adult life. Yet, there is still something about watching an old warbird taxi by that makes my heart flutter and I often find myself hearing an old radial engine coming to life in my dreams. However, all of my love for aviation becomes insignificant when I watch a young boy tug at his father to point at another fascinating aircraft or a young girl ask her father to hold her higher so that she can see. What exactly is it about aviation that inspires so many? From the small boy to the old man, there is something inexplicable that strikes a common cord among mankind. So, what is aviation?

There are many explanations that could be offered to describe why people are so fascinated by aviation and flying. I could argue that taking to the sky is symbolic of man conquering a realm that for thousands of years was available only to creatures born with wings. Or, I might launch into a discussion of the freedom that flight provides and how we are able to experience the world in a completely unique fashion. Further still, I could provide examples of how aviation makes the entire earth accessible and allows us to interact with people and cultures from across the globe in a single day. However, none of these explanations could even begin to explain the glint in a child’s eye when they take their first plane ride.

I encourage you to take a window seat on your next business flight and ponder over the experience of flight. Better yet, fly on a private airplane and truly enjoy the freedom that you have to go where ever you want without any kind of hassle. And even better still, take a kid flying and watch for that spark in their eyes and then you will see what aviation is. The spark IS aviation.

Photo by Mark Blanks

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Business aviation has taken a beating in the past two years.  While we are now seeing some signs of recovery, we must remember that those signs do not constitute prosperity. We can blame industry difficulties on the government or on the economy, but the reality is that we need to quit following the old business models. In many areas, we are doing things today just as we have for the past 30 years.

If we look to the technology sector of our economy as a possible success story to emulate, we see a constant flow of innovation in the market. Computing technology gets not only faster and more productive by the day, but it also gets cheaper. Social Technology has taken on a life of its own with changes happening faster than even the social media gurus can keep up with.

Those of us in aviation know that we cannot change or innovate as fast as the technology sector of this economy. Or can we?

When it comes to the aircraft design and regulation compliance that make our industry safer, admittedly we cannot go any faster than the government allows. New aircraft designs are also limited by the allocation of capital and have long cycles from initial investment to development to payoff. The tech sector can crank out new smart phones every six months, but we can’t just crank out new jets that fast.

Aircraft design and safety compliance timing may be out of our control, but that should not stop us from innovating.

Innovation starts with conversations. Doc Searls coined the term “the market is conversations” in his 1999 book The Cluetrain Manifesto.  With consumers self-aggregating and expressing intentions online, why can’t we engage in the conversations and meet those intentions?

We need to expand our market by engaging the larger audience of travelers in conversations about the value proposition of business aviation and even leisure travel by private aircraft. It starts online these days and ultimately moves to face-to-face contact.

We also need to challenge our market and our industry to start conversations on how to deliver business aviation at a reduced cost. The solutions must come from the entire supply chain, with everyone involved in business aviation as a part of the solution.

I have yet to hear anyone say they would like to go back to riding on the airlines after experiencing travel on a private aircraft.  What I have heard, hundreds of times, is that they can’t afford what we offer; so, they grudgingly go back for more of the misery of air travel by mass transit.

What are we going to do about it?

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The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton     
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

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I was fresh out of Mississippi State with a liberal arts degree and no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, managing a gift shop until I could make up my mind.  Then, a customer changed my life.  She worked for American Eagle Airlines and they were looking for a new agent.  Thus, I fell into a career.

After customer service training in Dallas, I returned to Columbus, Mississippi, for training on how to safely work the ramp.  To this day, 20 years later, I still walk around rather than under wings and I never walk in the prop arc.  The first thing I was told is that “you walk into a moving prop once.”  I didn’t need to be told again.

The job really was fun and a great challenge with instant feedback – the flights either departed on time or they didn’t.  Bags were either loaded correctly or not – you knew right away.  The only real feedback delay came from customer complaints or compliments.  Often, irate passengers would let you know with a quickness that they were unhappy; however, there were always those who were more of a slow simmer rather than a rapid boil.  Those passengers would wait to file a complaint with Consumer Relations. 

Each station had a report card and was rated on several elements of our operations including: baggage handling, on-time performance, and customer relations.  If a bag was mishandled, after some documentation a station was assigned responsibility and penalized.  If a flight was more than five minutes late departing from the gate because of ground handling problems or late passengers, the station was penalized. Stations were also penalized for any customer complaint unless irregularity in the customer’s claims could be documented (like with statements from airport security, which I actually had from time to time, but those are different stories).  At every station and with every team that I worked, we took these challenges seriously and did our level best to either raise or maintain our station scores.  At every station, we had the youngest group of agents and the smallest aircraft at the airport; so, we caught a great deal of ribbing from other ticket counters and sometimes from our passengers.  We saw our youth and aircraft as yet another opportunity to show that we could be better.  We worked hard and enjoyed helping to build our airline. 

It was called Nashville Eagle when I hired on, but was changed to Flagship Airlines before I left.  It didn’t matter what it was called, I loved it.  I loved the sense of community, of working together to build something we could be proud of.  Concourse D at the Nashville International Airport was home to all Eagle flights and it grew to be busy and congested, sometimes even between banks.  It was an exciting place to be.  Then, almost overnight, AMR shut it down.

Just like that, it was gone.  All of the outstations closed: Tupelo, Columbus, Tuscaloosa, Lexington, Paducah.  Everything we’d worked for years to build was dismantled in a matter of weeks and I never really understood why.  There were rumors: an ego contest between the Powers That Be, traffic within the Eagle system was good but too few passengers were connecting to American flights.  Whatever the reason, Concourse D became a wasteland.

Now, as I walk through the Nashville airport, still not entirely sure what I want to be when I grow up, I look to where the escalators descended to that old concourse, grieve a little for the airline that used to be and recite my employee number to myself – just in case anyone ever asks for it.   

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