Ah, but 70% of airline pilots come from civilian flight schools - the very ones that are closing their doors not from lack of applicants but from being forced to close for weeks with no means of paying the bills. Where will the airline pilots of the future - required to move those business travelers - come from? The military isn’t training as many people as before, and with their development of unmanned drones will likely train even fewer in the future.
If we lose 3/4 of the flight schools in the nation 10 years from now we will have an incredible pilot shortage. I think that will most certainly impact the business traveler. While unmanned flight technologies may be suitable for some military applications, they do have a failure rate that would be unacceptable for civilian transportation. Lose 10% of your drones to malfunction - tolerable (if annoying) in battle, but completely unacceptable flying New York to DC.
Prior to September 11, on any given day only 10-20% of ALL flights were passenger carrying services. So… what is the impact of losing 80-90% of aviation for a month? Business shipping - FedEx, UPS, DHL, USPS - was adversely affected. Business travelers who do their own flying were either stranded or thrown into the suddenly limited commercial services to get home. Specialty couriers - cancelled check transport being an example - completely shut down. Medical supplies like blood had to be trucked - taking considerably longer for an urgently needed and perishable product - instead of flown to NYC and Washington DC to treat the wounded. There is a LOT of aviation that the general public is unaware of, but that in no way means it isn’t important to the economy and the nation and isn’t a money engine for the economy.
But, sometime before the shortage manifests itself, wouldn’t flight schools start up again? Perhaps (likely) not with the same owners, but entrepreneurial pilots would see the coming shortage as a market and start new schools. This is not to diminish the loss to those recently put out of business.
On a slightly different tack (heading, to stay in the air), a small private airport about a mile from a major submarine base in the SE USA has been closed - all flight ops banned - by the gov’t. This would seem to be a “taking”* and worthy of compensation by the USNavy. Mrs. PlanMan suggested the USN could buy enough land, far enough away, and the SeaBees could build the new airport.
In my field, if a road project makes a property unusable, the gov’t has to buy out - or pay business damages to - the owner.
The land and airport aren’t bad ideas, but the Seabees are right out. They’re forbidden by law from major domestic construction. That law was put in place to quiet fears that union types had in WWII about the SeaBees being used to undercut their jobs.
I’ll jump on board w/ Broomstick (maybe this is headed for GD).
The thing that makes no sense to me is the obvious futility of some of these GA restrictions. For example, there’s a “temporary” moratorium on aircraft flying within 10 miles of nuclear plants. Near where I live, there’s a small airport with an FBO inside this ring, and he’s gotta be about out of business. For what? Do people really think that terrorists are going to obey this rule? So far, I haven’t seen any SAM equipment, or combat air patrol around these sites, (God help us if it comes to this) so only the law-abiding flying public is affected. Just a bunch of silly rules to make people feel good.
Give me a break - an airplane can zip thru that 10 miles before anyone can point into the sky and say “Hey, what’s he up to?”
Don’t dismiss the effects on non-aviation business. I once worked at an FBO in a small town with an automotive factory that employed hundreds of people. At least once a month they flew in a King Air with critical tools, parts, plans, etc. in order to keep the line moving. Without GA, that factory would likely not be in operation.
First of all - we already had a pilot shortage prior to September 11. That has been temporarially relieved due to much decreased demand, but as soon as airline demand goes back to prior levels it will be manifest once again.
But you also need to understand that there is a drive to make certain prohibtions on flight training permanent, or even extend them.
For instance, Midway airport in Chicago had three flights schools on September 10. Two are now gone for good. I have no idea how the third has managed to hang on this long. Meanwhile, Mayor Daley wants to ban all flight training within or above Chicago. >POOF< There goes flight school number 3, and there will be no possibility of a “future entrepeneur” re-establishing a business there.
There is also the new prohibitions on VFR flight (90%, at least, of flight training) within 10 miles of any nuclear power plant. Make that permanent and you lose the flight schools at Waukegan, Kenosha, Joliet, and Morris (this will also wipe out a skydiving school).
Another contingent wants to forbid flight training within “enhanced class B”. That’s essential within 25 miles of O’Hare. There goes Lewis University (an accredited 4-year college specializing in aviation degrees, which would be put out of business), Clow International, Naper, Brookeridge, DuPage, Schaumberg, Palwaukee, Lake-in-the-Hills, and Campbell (Waukegan already being closed by proximity to Zion Nuclear)
Oh - and keep in mind that most of the above represent more than one flight school. Palwaukee, for instance, had four on September 10, all in the black. Waukegan had three. That’s seven solvent flight schools within 10 miles of each other. That’s how much demand for flight training there is in the Chicago area. Clow has two. The others all at least one (I’m not as personally famillar with them)
THEN we have another group who wants to ban flight training in the “mode C veil”, which is 30 miles out from O’Hare. Cross off the list Gade, McHenry, Landings Condominum, Olson, Aurora. Joliet (whoops - already closed because of Dresden Nuclear) Howell-New Lenox, and Frankfort.
Open a new flight school? Where?
Also keep in mind that 90% of the business of the above airports is flight training. In some cases it’s 100%. Even those that don’t have a flight school are heavily dependent on student passing through, buying gas, coffee, vending machine food, maps, and other pilot paraphenalia. A very few will survive - DuPage because it’s a district office for the FAA, Palwaukee will be much reduced but surviving on charter and freight - but most will close.
If all that happens, my flight school will be the second closest to Chicago. Our flight school is full. Students schedule 3 weeks in advance. (The collapse is not due to the lack of interest!) OK, we could acquire more planes and students, but we only have ONE runway with no room to build more without knocking down houses. We could not possibly make up for closing so many other airports. If they expand Gary airport my airport will have to close due to airspace conflicts - and you lose yet another airport and school.
The two other airports near mine that would remain open - Lansing has two flight schools and is building another runway because they’re getting crowded. Porter County has three flight schools already and, again, the students are scheduling weeks in advance because of crowding.
I repeat - it is not lack of interest that is shutting businesses. The new regulations are killing aviation in America, but the public won’t feel the effects for about 10 years. By then - the flight schools will be long gone, the owners operating some other business or working elsewhere, and airports will be converted to condos. THEN we will have problems indeed.
Ah, the lawyers will love this - it’s not a “taking” or rendering the land unusable. The land is perfectly usable - but not the airspace above it. The lawyers would love to keep this in the courts for years, if not decades.
What will happen is that the current airport owners will be forced to sell to developers - the usual pattern is to dig up the runway and build condos. No more airport. Ever.
Multiply this across the country. There are 30 class B/Mode C veil areas. There are (at least) 86 nuclear plants with no-fly areas. How many airports? How many flight schools? How many pilots won’t get trained, or won’t complete training? This is potentially a huge problem and yes, it will affect the airlines, and shipping, and a whole bunch of other interests in the future.
Although I started this tread referring only to blimps, I agree with Broomstick (thanks for the AOPA info), Tranquilis, Johnny LA and everybody’s opinion expanding the issue to small aircraft and training restrictions. Can we move this to GD?