Frank Whiteley wrote:
I think the mystique of flying is somewhat diluted. When I was young,
few of my peers had ever been in an airplane, but we lived close to
significant aviation activity, so our imaginations and dreams of
flying were ever present. Today, a lot of youngsters have jetted
across the country or the oceans. What do they do? Play games, close
the window shades, sleep, or watch movies. Few look out the window to
try and figure out where they are or watch the changing clouds or even
the auroras. A few I've spoken with didn't consider it a particularly
pleasant experience, but a means to get to whatever was at the end of
the flight. Hardly inspiring.

And who can blame us? I'm one of those guys in his 20s that everybody
seems to despair about attracting, I've been soaring since last summer and
enjoying every moment, and I hate airliners with a deep passion.

When I was little I loved to fly commercially. I even got to meet the
captain and sit in the cockpit of a DC-10. (Good luck trying that one
today!) But as I grew out of the child-sized seats, realized just how tiny
and annoying those windows are, got more and more tired of the growing
stupidity of airport security, and just racked up a lot of commercial
flying, I got tired of the whole thing. Flying is great, but being stuffed
into a seat that's three sizes too small, packed into an aluminum tube
like sardines with no control over your destiny for hours, you can see how
it could be considered unpleasant.

Airliners are the busses of air travel. You find people who are fascinated
with trains, but hardly ever with busses. I think that if you want to
attract people to soaring, avoid comparisons with airliners as much as
possible. Other than the fact that both involve being high above the
ground, they have almost nothing in common.

I think there's no problem generating mystique around soaring, in fact I
think there may be a little too much of it. People need to know that it's
something that *they* can do themselves, not just superhuman masters of
the air. Most people probably know where their local airport is and have
some idea of how to procure an airplane ride if they felt like it, but how
many people know where their nearest glider operation is located? How many
realize that they could start learning as early as the next weekend and
they could be flying solo in just a couple dozen flights?

Maybe I'm subconsciously transferring my pre-soaring thoughts onto the
public at large, but that's how I see it.

--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software