"When I do not want to say things in real life I often say them here." — Mimi Smartypants
There I was at 30,000 feet
I’ve always loved movies and TV shows like “Starship Troopers” and “The Expanse,” which depict futures where men and women have become truly equal in every field, no assumptions made and no questions asked. And believe me, that’s the future I want, the one I grew up believing it and still dream is possible.
If I had a rant in me this morning, I’d lay into NPR for its slavish commitment to normalizing Trump, arguably not the worst unelected occupant of the White House (George W. Bush still has that distinction IMO), but certainly the most abnormal.
This Air-Minded post is from March 2014. I was thinking about the Douglas Skyknight yesterday, and after reviewing what I had written about it earlier, decided to move the post to the top of the queue. —Paul Woodford There’s a Skyknight on display at the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona, where I […]
Until now, I’ve been able to avoid saying Trump’s name in front of museum visitors. The closest I ever come is when I say the “current president” flies on Marine Corps helicopters. But it seems impossible to talk about a new paint scheme for Air Force One aircraft without mentioning the name of the only person who’s pushing the idea.
Trump’s motives may be entirely partisan, but nothing stays the same, and it isn’t written down anywhere that the Air Force One livery can’t change.
Like cats and their proverbial nine lives, pilots have an allotted number of close calls. Not nearly as many as cats get, though. Some of us get only one, some get three or four. Once you use them up you’re gone.
For the past few months, the restoration yard at Pima Air and Space Museum has been dominated by two huge Boeing airliners, a 747 and a 777. I’d point them out to visitors on my tram tour, joking that I didn’t know where we’d find room for them once they came out of resto. Well, now I know.
From Military.com: Navy to Change Pilot Call Sign Protocol After Minority Aviators Report Bias: “The head of naval aviation has directed the creation of a new process for approving and reviewing pilots’ call signs after two African-American aviators at an F/A-18 Hornet training squadron in Virginia filed complaints alleging racial bias in the unit, from which they […]