I dreamt that I received a notice from a collection agency that I had some
unpaid bills. I called them and they said that I owed the FAA some money, so
they were initiating the collection process. This came as news to me, so I
marched down to my local FAA office to get things straightened out.

Oddly, the FAA office was just a few blocks from my house, and was located
in a run-down two-story building in a shopping center (in reality there's a
vacant lot there). I took a number and sat waiting in the dingy little
office for my number to come up. When my turn finally came, I walked into a
little room with a computer and a woman working the "cases". I handed her
the paper from the collection agency, and she started tapping the keyboard.

After a few minutes of typing, she said condescendingly, "unh-hunh...I see
the problem...you have unpaid tickets - and quite a few of them, too." She
handed me back the paperwork.

Stunned, I asked exactly how many unpaid tickets were there. She leaned
forward, moved her eyeglasses down to the end of her nose, and gave me a
hard look over the top of them. "You have thirty five unpaid tickets on your
plane." Shocked, I started stammering gibberish mixed with excuses.

I was so sorry, I didn't know, how could this have happened, could this
really be true, maybe there was some mistake....blah blah blah. She was
unmoved. Then I asked for details - exactly what were these "tickets" for?
When did I (or my plane) commit the violations?

She got very defensive, all huffy. Told me she was very busy and a lot of
other people were waiting, that if I couldn't pay it all right now I could
make payments, but if I didn't start paying I'd be in big trouble.

I told her of course I would pay whatever they asked, but that I didn't
recall ever getting any tickets in the plane so I needed to see a printout
detailing the infractions before I paid them anything. She gave me a real
dirty look, and started tapping her keyboard again. She told me to go out to
the waiting room and take a seat. I did.

About 30 minutes later she came out, pointed to me and motioned me back into
her office again. I walked in and she was talking on the phone, clearly
angry with whoever was on the other end of the line. "Yeah, I got another
one of YOURS in here right now....yeah, I'm fixing everything....I'm really
tired of doing this always catch something....one of these days
it's gonna be BOTH our jobs....I don't need this...." etc. One bureaucrat
arguing with another.

She hands me a printout, showing a list of violations, now all cancelled,
with a zero balance owed at the bottom. She tells me I don't owe anything
anymore, and that I could go home.

Now really confused, I tell her I don't understand. What just happened?

She told me that Logan International Airport in Boston needed a new air
conditioning system and had no budget for it. Airport officials there had
been secretly attaching large numbers of small fines to registered aircraft
owners at random, and had generated millions of dollars for their new system
that way. Since each fine was relatively small, they figured most owners
would either never notice the charges, or would just pay them without
bothering to ask. I was just unlucky and had 35 of them hit my registration
all at once. She laughed and said it must have been one hell of an air
conditioning system there in Boston - maybe it was the same contractors who
dug their big tunnel. She said she was sorry, but it was just how things had
to be done nowadays with tight budgets, and was a common practice throughout
government agencies. Couldn't be helped. She told me to get out of her
office.

I got all indignant, told her she should be ashamed of herself, started
quoting Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and other founding fathers at
her. I said this was completely unAmerican and that I wasn't going to just
take it and go away. No, siree, this was unfair and it stunk and I was going
to make sure the world knew about this!

She glared at me and said I should watch my mouth - she could always find a
bunch of *other* unpaid tickets that I had, and I wouldn't like what would
happen. She told me to get the hell out of her office. I did.

I walked out into the street with my head spinning. I stumbled across the
parking lot to where my car was parked. Walking past an alley, I noticed
what looked like a substantial aircraft boneyard behind the building - I
could see at least a half dozen Cessnas there with the fuselages stacked
like cordwood, wings piled up in a separate heap. I saw a red and blue C-150
with the doors off and interiors completely gutted. All the planes had some
kind of a bright yellow sticker stuck to the fuselage by the doors.

The woman from the FAA office stepped outside, laughed, and yelled at me
across the parking lot: "That's right honey, take a good look, and see how
you like it!"

A shiver went up my back. I jumped in my car and drove home.

Then I woke up.

No kidding!


Scary, eh?

David Herman
N6170T 1965 Cessna 150E
Boeing Field (BFI), Seattle, WA

http://www.pacificnorthwestflying.com



PS: Just for the record, I generally get along just fine with the nice folks
from my local FAA office, always pay what I'm supposed to, and have nothing
against anyone at Logan International. And I hope the aircon system there
in Boston is working well.