This is Mother’s Day weekend 2017, and we’ve just come through a tumultuous few days where President Trump has fired Attorney General James Comey. Oh, and also a return to tweeting about Rosie O’Donnell! (I never thought I would be saying that in one sentence following another . . .)
So what does all this have anything to do with general aviation?
I’m not sure but it gives me more than enough “provocation” to rant about what’s going on in this country today.
This is not meant to be political. I know that sounds strange but I really don’t mean it to be so. I’m just pointing out that our President seems to be acting with haste, without much forethought, and with an incredible inability to rely on those that he has nominated or appointed to be in his inner circle. And that’s not even mentioning that most of those he’s surrounded himself with don’t seem to be very well qualified or reasonably gifted in the brains department.
So that makes me worried about our country in general, and since we work in General Aviation, should we be concerned about irrational changes being applied to our industry? For instance the commercial airlines want general aviation to pay much higher fees to use the air traffic control system. We don’t think that’s fair or necessary. Our level of use of the system is small compared to Commercial Aviation.
And this has nothing to do with whether the president is Republican or Democrat.I could care less. What I do care about is when the President of the most powerful country in the world chooses to blog about how much he hates Rosie O’Donnell again and calls her names during periods of crisis, think North Korea for example. Now truthfully, I don’t care for Rosie O’Donnell at all. I don’t think she has any talent,
and for the rest, I’ll just leave it at that. But for the life of me I can’t understand why President Trump continues to spend valuable time, WASTING his time by tweeting about someone, in this case Rosie O’Donnell, who is about the least important person that he should be concerned with at this moment, this week, this year, and how about all the rest of the time he is in office! Why does he pick such a worthless “fight”, one in which there will be no winner and one in which there really is no issue to argue about. She doesn’t like him, he hates her, and neither of them are ever going to change. The President doesn’t need her and she sure as heck doesn’t need the President for anything other than to be the President!
So I’m starting to question, and at times worry, about the decision process our President uses, if any, to make major decisions. He doesn’t seem to have any processes from what I can tell, he just shoots from the hip and asks questions later, if att all.
In General Aviation we have several pivotal important issues facing us such as, attempts to privatize the Air Traffic Control System, continued funding of the FAA, and recently the 180° about-face by the FAA who recently granted permission to the Santa Monica Airport to shorten its runway by almost half effectively making the airport unusable by some 70% of the General Aviation jet aircraft that uses the airport. That’s an historic about face for the FAA . . . and none of us ever thought that ever had a chance!
I always think that logic will prevail, that eventually “they”, whoever “they” are will do the right thing. For the first time in my life, and I’ve been around for quite a while, I no longer have that slightly comforting feeling that senses will prevail, “they” will do the right thing, and things will then be all right.
It wasn’t that long ago when I would comment that, “No, they (in aviation) won’t do that because that doesn’t make any sense”. Today, and as a result of this past week with the fiasco of firing the FBI Director, whether or not you think he should have been fired, and the
Rosie O’Donnell nasty tweet exchange started by the President again as just two examples, I now no longer have any clue what’s going to happen in General Aviation. I don’t know what’s going to happen to oil prices, not that I ever really did, but now I really don’t think there’s any kind of plan or course that we are following and if there is, I bet our President would not hesitate to do a 180° turn, and then vector 90° after that, then vector back to the original heading all within a couple of days, and by the way without consulting air traffic control all the while Tweeting again about how $#&*! Rosie O’Donal is . . .
“Please fasten your seatbelts”, the Captain anticipates more “turbulence” ahead!
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