Thoughts on a beautiful spring evening...

Oh what the heck, I'll take the bait...
Had this conversation recently with a patient who is a pilot but not
flying due to money issues... I floated the thought that we are headed
back to the 30's where airplanes (real airplanes, not self loading
cattle haulers) will be an unusual sight... Then only a tiny fraction
of the population was a pilot... Today (up till now) about the same
percentage of the population are pilots as are physicians, as are ham
radio operators, and some others - in other words a small
percentage... Dunno about the docs, but pilots are a shrinking
percentage...

Now we can all rattle off the likely causes - Draconian FAA
enforcement of even minor infractions of those invisible walls in the
sky, nonsensical but dangerous and intrusive HSA security regulations
that seem to multiply daily, rapidly rising cost of insurance, of
hangars, of parts, of maintenance, and of course - of gasoline...
I looked at the cost of gas at Washington National, they didn't have
any but the jet fuel was nearly $8 a gallon!

Chatted with a CFI at my home field yesterday... He has two regular
planes for rental and instruction... He also has an LSA (don't know
the model)... I asked how the LSA was going... He said it was bad...
When I asked why, he commented that the many prospective students for
trianing, and especially for the LSA, can't pass a medical and/or
security check for the instruction phase... That the biggest reasons
are DUI and drug convictions... He says that the vast majority of
younger people out there do not understand that a drug bust
permanently ends their chances of getting any kind of a security
clearance, including an airmans medical certificate... That was a new
thought for me... Even though I deal with drug and alcohol issues
daily I didn't realize how pervasive the criminal record for those
offenses is...

denny