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This year, AirVenture will include something never before seen at the massive annual trek to Oshkosh … bloggers coming together to talk about the two things they love best … airplanes and social media. Will you be one of them?

The First Annual AirVenture Blogger Fest - sponsored by Jetwhine.com - takes place at AirVenture on July 28th at 4 PM. The AirVenture folks have been nice enough to - appropriately enough - offer up the GAMA building for the event.

Being an active blogger is not a requirement to attend. We’ll be talking about blogging and aviation in general and anyone is welcome to come listen and learn more about how social media is providing a new kind of voice to the aviation industry.

Since all I can guarantee right now are cold drinks to all trying to beat the summer simmer of Oshkosh in July, I’m open to ideas that will keep the discussion flowing for an hour or so. Certainly we’ll cover a few basics such as writing, blogging platforms, LSAs, pilot careers, airline industry chaos, FAA, air traffic control, flight training, electronic media, business aviation, aviation marketing etc., etc., and so on for starters (I can talk pretty fast!). Who knows where the discussion will lead once our hour and a half is up?

Tell your blogger pal - both ladies and gents of course - that bloggers will be gathering at Oshkosh on July 28 at 4 PM.

Make a note to come join us and say hi. RSVP’s are not necessary, but questions or ideas can be posted here or sent via private e-mail to rob@jetwhine.com. See you there.

Given the world’s sorry state and aviation’s place in it, hope for the future is at the coffin corner. To help maintain that delicate balance it is natural to withdraw into–and protect–our little corner of aviation’s diverse world, sacrificing the others for our survival.

Over the past year or so this survival mechanism has surfaced in many conversations, including those that have followed several past posts, Low CFI Birthrate & Graying Population Adding to Teacher Shortage and Cessna Pilot Centers May be GA’s Last Hope for Reversing Pilot Population Decline. Needless to say, it pitched me into a death-spiral of despair. In tough times we need to support each other. And if we, the family of pilots, are sharing our isolationist critiques with newcomers–directly or indirectly– then we deserve to be a dying population.

My recovery to the coffin corner of hope came from an unexpected resource, the current issue of National Geographic Adventure. It introduced its more than 600,000 readers to aerotrekking in an eight page feature story, John McAfee’s Flying Circus Wants You!, written by Tom Clynes and photographed (including this one) by Dawn Kish.

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I was on my way back to Chicago Midway from Dallas on Southwest Airlines Flight 1078 the other day when, about five minutes before boarding time, I heard the announcement no one wants to hear. A delay due to a mechanical, an issue the gate agent acknowledged was an inconvenience to everyone. Looking around at the people sitting on the floor and standing against the wall in the boarding area, no one seemed that concerned. Honestly, I found that rather surprising.

But what took place over the next half hour gave me some real insights into this airline’s customer service techniques and why they so often translate into people who want to fly aboard the Dallas-based carrier.

Being an experienced Road Warrior - actually, I hate that phrase come to think of it - I started walking down the hall right after the announcement to the next gate where a later Southwest flight was scheduled to leave. I told the agent my story and asked her to put my name on the standby list to get a jump on the 150 other people that I knew were about to show up.

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Demographers will quickly tell you that a low birthrate combined with an aging population is not the key to a sustainable future for any population. Welcome to the situation that describes the American airmen who hold a current flight instructor certificate.

Birthrate and age are important in flight training because most of the CFIs who teach day in and day out are new and young. There are exceptions, of course, but how many 40-year-old CFIs to you see teaching every day at airports across America?

The CFI birthrate is measured by initial issuance of their teaching certificate. According to FAA data that starts with 1990, the numbers are trending in the same direction as the overall pilot population–down.

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The Cirrus Design folks were in Chicago the other night on the first stop of a 22 city nationwide-tour promoting not only the G-3 version of their top selling airplane, but also a special new version of Garmin’s popular G-1000 avionics system called the Perspective as standard equipment on the aircraft.

What made last week’s event of particular note is that people were able to peer into the cockpit of the SR-22 while it sat inside the Garmin retail store located on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. The Cirrus folks trucked it down from Duluth, pulled off the wings and made it look to passersby like the airplane belonged on Michigan Avenue.

The irony of the event however, was that it took place on the same day General Motors announced massive layoffs in an attempt to cut the production cost of new cars. Not to be outdone, United Airlines also said it would cut another 1,000 workers including pilots and flight attendants to try and keep the airline from sliding any further toward the bring of extinction.

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When the FAA issued the sport pilot rules in September 2004, it was clear that the new certificate was a stepchild to the FAA family of “real” pilots, you know, the private, commercial, and ATP certificates.

The clues? “Real” pilots don’t have to carry their logbooks on every flight to prove their qualifications. “Real” pilots don’t need make-and-model endorsements to fly different aircraft in the same category and class. And the dual instruction “real” pilots receive for one certificate counts toward the requirements of the next one up the line.

Now, almost four years later, the FAA has accepted sport pilots and invited them to join the family of “real” pilots. On Tax Day, April 15, it published a notice of proposed rulemaking that covers 22 “fixes”  that would eliminate the things that separated sport pilots from “real” pilots.

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Having flown the brilliantly-engineered Dassault 7X last year in Paris, the thought of a model somewhere between the real thing and the one that sits on my desk was intriguing.

Take a look and a listen as a Dassault engineer explains the intricacies of a radio controlled model 7X to AIN TV’s Ed Heiland at EBACE in Geneva Switzerland.

This 7X is available as a kit for about $25,000. A real Dassault 7X will set you back about $42 million.

Reversing the decline of the pilot population “is the most important thing we are addressing,” says Cessna Pilot Center Manager Julie Boatman.

“We have several things in development that I’m not quite ready to talk about yet,” but as part of those efforts Cessna is revitalizing its CPC network and “looking at every element of what we do and how that addresses the demographic we’d like to bring into flying.”

That demographic includes people that general aviation has not traditionally approached before, like professional women. One key to reaching these new audiences, Boatman says, will be to reach beyond the traditional motivations of aviation as a heroic adventure or an effective business tool (both still valid) and sell “flying as a path to personal growth and challenge.”

If anyone has a chance of success it’s Cessna. It has the knowledge, experience, and wherewithal to create and deliver a targeted nationwide effort to recruit new pilots. Equally important, with its nationwide network of nearly 300 CPCs, it can deliver on the promises made.

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As Tina Turner said when she and Ike produced their own version of the Credence Clearwater Revival classic, Proud Mary, “We never do nothing nice and easy. We always do it nice … and rough.”

So here’s your chance to take a look at two videos that will teach you a bit more about the nation’s air traffic controllers and their contentious interactions with their bosses at FAA.

The first version comes from the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) and offers the air traveler a pretty straight forward view of what might well happen as the number of experienced air traffic controllers continues its downward spiral.

The other version came to us through the ATC News site and offers a Big Brother version of life inside of the agency from a controller’s perspective. Having spent 10 years of my life with the agency, I’d say the NATCA folks are being pretty nice at this point in their dance with the FAA.

This post comes with a warning. Those of you employed by the agency are not going to like the second version one bit I fear.

Evan Spark’s ran an interesting post the other day about Southwest Airlines and Herb Kelleher, the company’s chairman. Take a look if only to watch this great video of Herb starring in a Southwest commercial 30 years ago. It’s clear why he spent so much of his career as their point man. He’s always been good in front of crowd. But so are most of the people that work at Southwest from what I’ve experienced and that element is a major competitive advantage for the airline.

Evan’s post also offers an important contrast that looks deeper into where people fit at Southwest versus its competitors. Sparks began by posting a link to Southwest’s mission statement.

Allow me to quote Southwest president Colleen Barrett… “our goal of serving you [the customer] with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and company spirit is not just what comes naturally to our Employees. It’s also the pledge we’re committed to honoring each and every day.”

Barrett apparently well recalls the message Herb has promoted for 30 years as well as she says, “Our Customer Service package is totally dependent upon [our] Employees. Without Employees—and without the right Employees—we would have at best poor Customer Service, and poor service means no more Customers.” At Southwest, the company priorities are simple, Employees, Customers, then Shareholders, completely upside down from the legacy airlines.

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