Meigs now enjoyed by all!

wrote in
oups.com:
snip
Meigs provides huge economic benefits to the downtown
business district of Chicago. Calculations based on a 1993
City of Chicago study indicate that--using extremely
conservative assumptions--Meigs contributes a minimum of

1,500 jobs and $57.3 million annually to the local economy,
and perhaps 10 or more times those numbers. A survey
indicates that 76% of arriving (non-airline) aircraft are in
Chicago to do business downtown. The large majority of these
are large twin engine turboprop or executive jet aircraft,

Will the new park and Arena contribute that much to the local economy?
How many people will come in from hundreds of miles out of town to see
concerts there? Of course, if they fly in, they will have to go to MDW
or ORD and pay the exhorbitant fees found in those places.


The simple fact is that while there are SOME people who are "jet
setters" as you say, and use GA as their "rich people toys", there are
many more who use GA for legitimate, practical, and community serving
purposes.

There are people who use small aircraft to get to work, or to travel
between business locations. Sales representatives use small aircraft to
visit customer sites and sales calls and make their living. Many people
fly for recreational purposes - just to get away, much like many people
own boats for recreational purposes. But these people are not rich
people, just ordinary people who use aircraft like you would use your
car because it suits their needs better. Many fly planes that sell for
prices that are in the same range as a luxury car. (There are even
planes that can be purchased for less than a Hyundai!)

Many of these pilots also volunteer to fly patients and their families
for Angel Flight and other similar public service missions to provide
care, compassion, or emergency medical services. Or they fly for the
Auxiliary Air Force or Auxiliary Coast Guard and help protect or save
people just like you.

And of course, as someone pointed out in another thread on this
newsgroup, the Airline pilots that fly the 737s and DC-10s out of MDW
and ORD weren't born with the yellow and black stripes on their
shoulders. They spent many years in places like Miegs learning to fly,
training others to fly, and gaining the knowledge and experience
required to safely carry hundreds of passengers and their cargo across
the country in large Airline Jets.

Maybe some day you'll find yourself sitting at that beach with your
kids, listening to the echoes of the rock concert banging away at what
used to be Meigs Field. Your son will look up at the sky and point and
says, "Look Daddy! Airplane! Airplane!" You can tell him the story of
how before he was born, people used to come to that very place with
their kids and get airplane rides for $35. But you can't take him for
one because the people of Chicago would rather pay their cable company
to listen to a bunch of street hoodlums yell about killing cops and
raping women with the tunes of oldies playing in the background.


Enjoy the concert.

Judah wrote:

But these people are not rich
people, just ordinary people who use aircraft like you would use your
car because it suits their needs better. Many fly planes that sell for
prices that are in the same range as a luxury car. (There are even
planes that can be purchased for less than a Hyundai!)

Even if we assume that some of these recreational and business visitors
arrive by jet, that just means that they'd have brought more money to spend
in the local economy (on the assumption that jet's cost more and therefore
those in jets have more to spend {8^).

That money is now going elsewhere.

- Andrew