Max Trescott on General Aviation

Clancy Prevost, CFI, American Hero

There's hardly a person in America that doesn't know that on 9/11, Flight 93 didn't achieve its target of crashing into the White House or the Capitol. Instead, a group of brave passengers seized the moment and took destiny into their own hands. These brave people altered the course of history and kept a national tragedy from becoming worse. As a nation, we're indebted to them doing what they felt was right.

Clancy Prevost, Flight Instructor, is the American Hero who gave the passengers a critical advantage. Instead of 5 hijackers, only 4 were on board, since Clancy warned his superiors, who eventually called the FBI, that the "20th hijacker" assigned to him for training didn't fit any reasonable profile for a person training in a 747 simulator. Clancy spoke up and persisted, even when his supervisors felt that it might be better to just keep the cash and give the training. Hopefully there's a little Clancy in all of us, and when we see something that's not right, we'll speak up and persist, even in the face of others who seek to avoid controversy and look the other way.

If you think Clancy's the product of small town American values, you're right. Coincidentally, I can tell you in detail about the town and the values that influenced a man like Clancy Prevost. After all, we grew up two blocks from each other...

User Fees: Dormant not Dead

Senator Bill Nelson's recent comment that "User fees are dead" was surely well received by the 400 constituents who heard him speak recently in Ft. Lauderdale. Coming from such a credible source--the Senator sits on the aviation subcommittee of the Senate's Commerce, Science and Technology Committee--this undoubtedly cheered the crowd as well it should.

Phil Boyer's more cautionary words that "in politics it isn't over until the final vote" bespeaks a more important truth: user fees are possibly dormant but not dead. There's been a long history of government urging user fees for general aviation, and perhaps Senator Nelson meant that user fees are dead for now. If history has any predictive value, then...