Covid

Where Does General Aviation Go From Here?

September 21, 2020 by Scott Spangler

Nothing in the world seems to make sense anymore.

On Monday (September 14), GAMA published its aircraft shipping and billings report for the second quarter, and it’s not good. Every category took a significant hit. The surprise was that piston airplanes got off easy with just a 13.3% decrease from the same period in 2019. Piston helos, on the other hand, took the biggest hit, down 45.2%. Between the two were business jets, down 26.7%; turboprops, down 34.2%; and turbine helos, down 37.1%.

When looking at a bigger picture, framed by my second-floor office window in my hometown of roughly 3,500 people, things are more confusing because this week crews started building three new houses. Midweek, the TV news reported that home remodeling companies were never busier. How is this possible when the virus unemployed millions, with thousands more to join them next month when the bailout restrictions expire, and most people who still have jobs live paycheck to paycheck?

Certainly, the news on September 16 that the Federal Reserve expects to leave interest rates near zero through 2023 has something to do with this. And what does it all mean for the future of general aviation? Will people invest in new airplanes as they are investing in new houses? And what about used airplanes? What has the virus done to that market? If it is following the nonsensical real estate environment, used airplanes like prelived-in homes do not seem to be on the market very long. But clearly, by comparing the GAMA report with what I see out my office window, the two are not alike.

Maybe general aviation will recoup some of the transportation business the virus took from the airlines, at least for those with jobs and the ability to afford an airplane, a fractional ownership of one, or at least a charter flight. Then again, one needs a place to go, and the approval to get off the plane upon arrival, as dictated by any applicable entry and quarantine requirements.

Time will tell, of course, and we are sure to get a clue of what the future of general aviation might hold at the end of September, when we see consequences of the third quarter of this unpredictable year.

On the positive side, on my hike around town yesterday, a daily excursion to get some exercise and fresh air, I saw more general aviation airplanes buzzing above me than I’d ever seen on a Friday afternoon (except during AirVenture). But this, too, may have been because of timing. It was a beautiful sunny, cloud-free day in the 70s. Being this is Wisconsin, last night’s hard freeze warning was winter knocking at the door, so those lucky pilots may have been logging their last flights of the season.

Either way, no matter what is going on, there is nothing more beautiful, more soul lifting than seeing a sunshine yellow airplane humming its way across a spotless blue sky.— Scott Spangler, Editor

Staying Dry & Distant at the EAA Museum

August 10, 2020 by Scott Spangler

With thunderstorms lined in assaulting waves on radar and pathfinding drops splattering themselves against my office window, changing my Saturday morning plans for a two-wheel ride to Rio, Wisconsin, seemed prudent. Remembering that the EAA Aviation Museum had reopened on the previous Monday, a visit there would be interesting on several levels, especially since it has been several years since I last paced my way around its winged occupants.

Turning into the museum driveway, the blue signs saying the EAA grounds were closed to the public were gone. Orange cones funneled me to a forkliftabale light taupe AirVenture kiosk that sheltered a man with a mask. He asked if I’d been out of the state anytime in the past two weeks. Nope. Did I have any respiratory problems? Nope. Did I have a fever? Not that I know of. Drawing from some unseen holster, he held a temperature-sensing pistol to my head. It beeped. He asked one more question: Did I have a mask? Yup, it’s in my pocket.

Parking beyond a cluster of maybe a dozen or so cars, most of the license plates I passed were from Wisconsin, with a few from Michigan and one from Minnesota and another from Indiana. It seems the Illinoisans were taking their states quarantine requirements for anyone from or visiting Wisconsin seriously, or was that just for people living in Chicagoland?

Four signs led me to the front door. The first said masks are required for everyone 5 years and older. Next, museum attendance was limited to 150 people, and if it were full, you’d have to wait outside until someone left. EAA would prefer admission payment with a credit card, but it would still accept cash. (EAAers just need to show their membership card.) The final sign graphically dictated the distance and hand-sanitizing parameters of social distancing.

After showing my membership card to the nice lady behind the Plexiglas screen, instead of saying hello to the cluster of docents that usually awaited visitors just steps into the museum proper there were just more signs. One reminded everyone to maintain 6 feet of distance. The other said the hands-on exhibits, the Johnson Wax S-38, Willan Space Gallery, KidVenture, the cockpit, Wright Flyer, and powered parachute simulators, were closed.

But the faint scent of airplane still permeated the calming museum half light, as it always has. Shrugging off my inability to remember when I’d last visited, I set off on my atavistic path forged when I needed to stretch my legs or clear my mind when my office was on the other side of the museum’s doors (and it was, like this day, raining). A new model of the Graf Zeppelin overlooked the Wright Flyer in its usual place below me, at the bottom of the stairs. Behind me, I could hear Steve Buss, a friend and former coworker, narrating the film playing in the Skyscape Theater.

Stickers on the balcony railing indicated the desired distance between those overlooking the airplanes below. The composition of Van’s Aircraft RVs was new. So was the prototype Christian Eagle on a vertical line in the aerobatic gallery below. Behind me, a tape barrier put all of the hands-on aerospace physics experiments in the Willan Space Gallery out of arm’s reach. Around the corner, a similar barrier blocked the automatic whooshing sliding doors that led to KidVenture. An Aviore mural has replaced the outer space theme artwork. Interesting.

Stopping on my way to the Eagle Hangar, the bathrooms were open but the bubblers (drinking fountains to out-of-staters), were swaddled in black garbage bags and green packing tape. Given its tertiary use as an event space, the arrangement on the hangar deck changes often, or it did until the pandemic rearranged life. The fixed displays, the prototype P-51 and the F4U-4 that dominated the Navy corner on the opposite wall, hadn’t moved. But the reassembled Spanish Bf-109 Messerschmitt now flew above the P-51 at balcony eye level.

The dewinged Messerschmitt used to reside on the opposite wall, in a canvas nook festooned with Top Secret signs, because it shared the space with a replica of the Fat Man, the plutonium bomb that fell on Nagasaki 75 years ago tomorrow, August 9. In its place was a Bell UH-1B Huey. Descending the stairs at the far end of the balcony, I made my way across the floor to investigate it.

On the final panel telling of the Huey’s history, I found a surprise, a photo I’d taken from the USS Blue Ridge, command ship for the evacuation of Saigon in 1975. It capture the moment an ARVN pilot stepped out of a Huey. It captured the pilot’s fifth and final such flight. With his family, he’d arrived the night before in a CH-47 Chinook, which he later ferried to the USS Midway. With room for just one helo on the flight deck, he’d volunteered to ditch the Hueys so the next one could land. When the helo’s he’d ditched at lower altitudes almost fell on him, he started stepping out of them at higher altitudes. After he’d injured his ankle in the pictured hundred-foot fall, the flight deck crew started pushing the empty helos over the side.

Working my way back to the corner, I paid homage to Ernie Gann at his Chicken Coop writer’s shack. Peeking out the back door and seeing it rain free, I followed the path to Pioneer Airport. It was unchanged, except I don’t remember the flat right main-gear tire on the Ryan SCW, in the eponymous hanger of its manufacturer.

Making my way down the line to the vacant Air Academy lodge and Compass Hill, I notice a stack of blocks that were building new panels at the EAA Memorial Wall. What many may not know is that part of this area, between the wall and the memorial chapel, is a registered cemetery (I was even on its board for a time during my EAA employment). It is a small plot, and I went looking for the headstone that, when I’d last looked at it, was engraved with the names and birthdates of Paul and Audrey Poberezny.

Paul passed on August 22, 2013, and I wondered if EAA had added this date to the headstone, which bears the words, “To Fly” under the wings of a US Air Force Command Pilot. It took me a while to find it, but there it was up a few stairs on the sidewalk behind the chapel.

Maybe they moved it to accommodate the additional Memorial Wall panels; regardless, its inscriptions were unchanged. Maybe he’s waiting for his wife (and EAA’s mom), Audrey, who was born in 1925, four years Paul’s junior. I’d pass her assisted living facility on my way home. Looking skyward, the clouds suggested that I get a move on. — Scott Spangler, Editor

How I Spent My AirVenture Vacation

July 27, 2020 by Scott Spangler

Like several hundred thousand others who normally spend the summer preparing for their annual pilgrimage to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, I’ve been anxiously trying to decide what will fill the time I normally spend tramping 10 miles in the AirVenture maze created by 10,000 airplanes.

Exacerbating the challenge is my lack of experience. This is my first AirVenture vacation since my inaugural pilgrimage to Oshkosh in 1978. Personally—and professionally—the event surpasses my birthday as the primary measure of the passage of time.

Covid’s cancellation of OSH20 has been like the traumatic amputation of a limb, but instead of phantom pain in the absent limb, I’ve been hearing things. With my office window, roughly 10 miles west of Wittman Regional Airport, for 51 weeks of the year it rarely frames the buzzing hum of a flying machine.

But this past week I’ve been hearing more airplanes than usual, and my Fitbit says all my trips down and up the stairs to rush outside to look for them would have taken me to the summit of Mount Everest. Only once did I see something that proved I was not hearing things. Early in the week, at maybe 2,000 feet above ground level, came two three-ship Vs of Piper Cherokees bound for OSH.

Knowing that this group normally gathers at the Waupaca Municipal Airport, I spent Friday on the road, visiting it and the other airports in the area, from Fond du Lac and Wautoma to Wild Rose and Brennand. Except for someone in a Cessna 150 flying circuits-and-bumps at Wautoma, watched by an unattended Aeronca Chief sunning its uncowled cylinders in front of an open hangar, all were quiet.

A surprise awaited me at Wittman. An excavator was slowly masticating the terminal and spitting the unrecyclable bits into big bins. If Mother Nature allows OSH21 to take place, a new 6,254-square-foot terminal will greet FBO-bound pilgrims. Riding the rest of the way around the airport, the gates were closed at every portal to the convention ground, each with the big blue sign saying EAA was closed.

Oddly enough, there were humans guarding the gates down by Convention HQ and the roads leading to EAA’s galactic headquarters, whose employee parking lot was again full of cars. Perhaps the staff is back and preparing for the August 3 public reopening of the EAA Aviation Museum.

Reflect, Ruminate, Reconcile

Facing my first AirVenture vacation, I ultimately decided to simulate my inaugural pilgrimage in 1978, by camping out after a long walk and considering my future. Instead of wandering the flight line, admittance to which then required a pilot’s certificate or EAA membership card, I cut my grass. (It’s a big lot; Fitbit says I push the mower 10 miles, my average daily AirVenture hike.) And instead of pitching my tent in Schiefelbein’s cow pasture, I pitched on my just mowed grass.

Having lived the consequences of decisions made in 1978, and with more years behind me than ahead, pondering the future was no easier because life’s unforeseen, uncontrollable variables, such as viruses and Parkinson’s, are what make such rumination interesting. Thankfully, technology has come a long way since 1978, and a laptop is more efficient, not to mention, legible, than scribbled notes of which path to pursue.

At 24, a civilian again for just a few months after spending a quarter of my life in the US Navy (and half of that aboard ship, which in comparison makes the Covid confinement seem like a vacation), my choosing between building an airplane and aviation career or going to college was my primary decision.

After talking with a spectrum of builders and aviation professionals, I decided to attend the University of Missouri School of Journalism, because there is more to life than airplanes. All of the builders and professional aviators I talked to, including EAA founder Paul Poberezny, shared a common trait. They were 100-percent into aviation, and that single-minded focus fueled their success.

I’m not a 100-percent person, never have been, never will be. The full spectrum of aviation has always been an important part of my life, but not to the exclusion of anything else that piques my curiosity. J-School reinforced my collegiate course because only 10 percent of my classes would focus on journalism. I would create my own course of study by enrolling in any of the university’s courses that interested me. This foundation of learning made me an autodidactic polymath.

Since my inaugural pilgrimage, I have enjoyed four Oshkosh transitions. Until 1989, I was a weekend participant, spending one day on the road, one day walking the flight line and filling a forum seat or workshop bench to learning something new, and another day on the road back to school or work. I was on the road in 1989, too, but I was hauling 5,000 Flight Training magazines and a booth, where I’d spend the week handing them out and meeting readers in the corrugated convection building that was the south exhibit building.

My perspective changed again in 1999 when Flight Training moved to is new home in the east, and I was the contracted creator and editor of NAFI Mentor. At the time, NAFI was an EAA affiliate, and it gave me a peek inside the tent. A month after AirVenture I crossed the threshold when I filled the empty chair of Sport Aviation editor in chief Jack Cox. Oshkosh becomes a completely new event when you’re immersed in its preparations. It was both rewarding and frustrating, but like life itself, nothing lasts forever.

My last AirVenture transition has been the longest-lived. For 14 years (and counting), I proudly work the AirVenture media credentials for JetWhine. It has been an unsurpassed joy because its publisher, Rob Mark, encourages unbounded explorations of aviation curiosity equal to my unfettered wanderings during my first decade of Oshkosh participation. From my backyard campsite, this era surpasses the first because the road trip is shorter and I get to sleep in my own bed every night.

What’s next is unknown, unpredictable with any degree of confidence. Uncertainty is the future’s key characteristic. Depending on how Mother Nature behaves over the coming year, OSH19 might well have been my last. We can hope for OSH21, but we won’t know for sure until we walk under the brown arch next year.

And I’m okay with that because I learned in 1972 that life offers no guarantees. Each morning you awake might be your last because an A-7 dives into your apartment building one night at Mach 1, or the gunner behind the red tracers floating lazily toward your helo might find their mark, or a virus might sneak up on you. With no guarantees, what matters most is making the most of your abilities every morning you are able to get out of bed.

Whining about things you cannot control is time wasted that could be better invested in something you can control, something more rewarding in the moment, like mowing the grass and camping out in the backyard. — Scott Spangler, Editor

Aviation’s Covid Consequences

April 20, 2020 by Scott Spangler

Concentrating on a short-term goal is natural when facing unpleasant restrictions, but these inconveniences pale in comparison to the long-term consequences. What unites both timeframes is the inescapable reality that as individuals, societies, and industries, we are intimately responsible for the consequences of our decisions. With a clear blue sky to stare into, it is a perfect day to ponder aviation’s Covid consequences.

Pilot Shortage to Surplus

Before the coronavirus disrupted our lives, professional pilots were in short supply. Then the airlines parked most of their fleets, and those still flying were bereft of passengers. Many may hope that travel will rebound one day, but that seems unlikely given the growing number of Americans out of work (22 million and counting) and the trickle down delusions that have, since the 1980s, put shareholders and the executives who cater to them (and themselves) ahead of employees and customers.

Everyday employees are corporate fodder sacrificed as needed to maintain a corporation’s bottom line, so don’t expect those millions to return immediately to work. It took almost 10 years for them to find work after the great recession, and the economy will start its Covid recovery from a deeper hole.

The airlines will probably dig it deeper. The government just gave the airlines a $25 billion bailout, with each of them negotiating its specific requirements and limitations with the administration. To get the bailout, airlines may not fire or furlough employees until September 2020, so we can expect the pilot surplus to exist in October 2020. They cannot buy back more of their stock (which is how they spent a lot of their tax cut windfall) until September 2021 and cannot reward their executives until September 2022.

User Fees

Buried in the CARES economic stimulus legislation is an Easter egg that gives airlines what they have been working toward for years, relief from the ticket tax that with, the aviation fuel tax, funds the Airport Improvement Program. Perhaps you saw the media releases from aviation’s alphabet organizations warning that aviation’s infrastructure was in peril because the AIP account was quickly being depleted.

Seeking a degree of fairness, the alphabets urged Congress to provide fuel tax relief for a time. Congress hasn’t yet responded to this request, but if it agrees, it might open the door wide to user fees. The path to this outcome is in the last tax cut legislations. All of the cuts that benefited the haves are permanent, and those that benefit the less fortunate have expiration dates.

Don’t be distracted by the $10 billion infusion from the DOT. Like the $350 billion earmarked for small business relief, that won’t last long at all. America must still fund its aviation infrastructure long term, and as they have in the past, the airlines will lobby for user fees as the “fairest” solution, if Congress provides fuel tax relief. If politicians really cared about treating those who elected them equitably, they would keep the fuel tax and make the multitude of fees the airlines charge subject to the ticket tax.

AirVenture Anticipation?

With the Covid curve still climbing in Wisconsin, Governor Tony Evers extended the stay-at-home order until May 26. That greatly reduces the chances that EAA AirVenture Oshkosh will happen this year, for a number of reasons.

The lockdown and social distancing seriously impedes the site work that typically is kicking into high gear about now. And it precludes the arrival of the thousands of volunteers who make the event work. Also affecting the volunteer workforce is their post-Covid employment status—no matter any pilgrim’s passion, food and shelter come first—and their age. The average EAAer is in the demographic most at risk.

Ultimately, miracles happen, but in this case, only time—with testing and a precipitous decline of new infections and hospitalizations—will tell. Given the ineptitude of the national response to the pandemic….

Making smart decisions is the best way to mitigate the Covid consequences, because in this case, death is the only cure for stupid.

The coronavirus is one of Mother Nature’s many faces, none of them sentient beings that pledge allegiance to any political party or ideology. She works on a long-term timeframe, relentlessly taking advantage of every opportunity to propagate. And when something stands in her way, she mutates to avoid the barrier and continues on her way, blowing raspberries at human hubris. — Scott Spangler, Editor