Unfriendly Skies

In article ,
(pacplyer) wrote:

My Hat's off to you Orval, if you fought the "keep little airplanes
away from the airports their fuel taxes paid for" war. IIRC, airlines
in the past were nearly exempt from fuel tax, so most inter-city
airports were largely funded and built by General Aviation. But
airline management with the FAA nodding along, wanted to ban GA
entirely from those airports. I remember that AOPA was fighting
against the expense aspect that a transponder and later mode C would
impact on its members. (remember Roger, traffic was not as dense in
many areas as it is today, the need for ATC seperation was not as
obvious as it is today.)

The Deregulation act of 78', however, has turned the Orient Express of
the skies into Amtrack. The golden years are over as long as long as
gov looks at aviation purely as a money-getter. And that's a foolish
outlook when you consider that all of aviation (including aerospace)
has only returned 2% on investment, historically. You wouldn't put
your money in a S&L with that kind of dismal return. This country's
big enough to build new reliever airports everywhere. But every time
we put our hard-earned dollars into an aviation trust fund or Soc Sec
system it just gets raided by the political flakes. Scotty, please
beam me back to the thirties...

pacplyer - out


Orval Fairbairn wrote in message
..
.
In article ,
"Roger Long" om
wrote:

I picked up a 1989 book in our local swap shop called "Unfriendly Skies"
by
Captain "X" and Reynolds Dodson. It's an "as told to" about the
deregulated
airline industry and a pretty good read. It sounds like not much has
changed in the last 10 years except the airlines are losing even more
money.
Some good almost crashing stories by the Captain.

Boy, does this guy hate AOPA and little airplanes! He makes a big deal
about the then recent fight over the creation of Class B and C airspace
and
how AOPA fought the transponder requirement. I'm a little shocked to
hear
this. I like crossing that invisible magenta line and knowing the
everyone
I meet for the next few miles will probably have one and be talking.

Has anybody else read this book?

--
Roger Long



I am a veteran of that battle -- its intent was to put everybody under
"positive control," which the system could never handle. At that time,
there was a coterie of seven who ruled FAA -- two of whom were Keith
Potts, then head of ATC and Herman McClure, then head of FAA Western
Div. They had no use for the Little Guy, and wanted to push us off the
map.

Eventually, we formed a petition to reassign Potts -- McCluire was also
reassigned.

My favorite was then AA CEO Bob Crandall's articles in several magazines
(Fortune comes to mind) stating that "nearly 70% of our near-misses are
with private planes."

Ed WIschmeyer and I wrote letters to Fortune telling them that what
Crandall REALLY said is that "more than 30% of our near-misses are with
other airliners, flown by multi-pilot, professional crews under positive
control" and that, since AA had 10% of the airliner fleet, more than 3%
of their near-misses were probably with their own planes.

In addition, since GA makes up more than 90% of the total number of
planes, AA was having "more than 30% of their near-misses" with less
than 10% of the planes out there.

That part was never published, but Crandall shortly thereafter contacted
AOPA t work on a "partnership."

I hope that some lower-level AA exec got his wings clipped on that one!