On 12 Jun 2006 10:52:43 -0700, "FatKat" wrote:


matt weber wrote:
On Sun, 11 Jun 2006 01:29:17 GMT, Jack wrote:

kenny wrote:
"drclive" wrote in message
oups.com...
We need the money and support for organizations like AOPA which is
everyday fighting for our rights as GA pilots. BA and the Concorde
bellows to an industry valued around 1.5 billons pounds; they don't
need either support or money from us.

hey i belong to both AOPA & NBAA, and am a CFI

i hope the cynical attitudes displayed are in the
minority. it would be a shame to discourage a new
generation of young engineers from pursuing the
next evolution of manned flight hardware. Or to
dissuade the "kid" schlepping odd jobs at the local
FBO to pay their way through flight training (on
the ladder towards the multi turbine 121 platforms).
Not all of us care to stop our flight training at
the PPL milestone. - and not all of us care to be
ALPA union flunkies more concerned about extorting
more pay from the flying public either....

As a sidenote, the B-52 is still around, and it's
older than Concorde. Can you say SLEP ? however i
agree, it would be like trying to fly that ancient
relic the space shuttle into the next century. time
to sink it and develop a new generation of hardware.

naysayers can rejoice with the likes of Fred Smith's
old college professor (who purportedly gave him a C
on his term paper describing his brainchild).

Who's Fred Smith and why should I care?

At Uni, Fred Smith did an overnight package service business plan, I
think he got a C. He took the project and turned into a small
business that has grown a little since them....

Fred Smith is the founder of Federal Express....

So I've heard. The real story lurking in all of these "where are they
now" stories is what happened to the "other guy" - as in, what happened
to the professor who had in his hands the business plan that became
FedEx? Also, I was just curious as to how closely the ultimate
business plan conformed to the one that got the C? Maybe that
professor wasn't the doofuss that the above anecdote suggests...
There were some not so trivial impediments to making it into the
business it is today. The largest was at the time, the business was
regulated, so to enter it, Fedex was restricted to aircraft that could
carry no more than 5,000 pounds of cargo. Fedex often had Falcon jets
flying in formation from Memphis to major cities. The idea of a
reliable overnight delivery service was new, and it is the newer
companies that realize that this can cut their capital costs
substantially by not having to invest so much in local and regional
spare parts depots.

What the professor failed to comprehend was the ability of business to
get the rules changes, and Fedex lobby very active to get the 5,000
pound limit removed. It took several years to do, but they did in fact
get rid of it, and that's the point at which Fedex takes off like the
proverbial rocket.