Vincent had the luck to visit the Airbus site in Toulouse, and came back with some goodies for you, so… It’s giveaway time again!
The rule is simple: any miles purchase between now and the 13th of February at 1900 UTC qualifies for a random selection of winners. We’ve a red Airbus A380 “Remove before flight” keyring, a black Airbus A350 XWB lanyard and a blue Airbus A380 lanyard to give away.
Take a chance, even buying a single $3.75 mile qualifies you! Use the yellow buttons on the right-hand side of this page to buy miles now, and don’t forget to mention which one you’d like to receive if you win.
Good luck to all, and don’t forget this is to support General Aviation.
Good news relating to General Aviation are not exactly filling up newspapers these days - this is also why we organize our flight - so when positive things happens it’s good to spread the word about it…
Recently, the post 9/11 security restrictions dramatically impacting General Aviation activities at Reagan National airport have been eased. The activity there was reduced from 10 to 12 GA movements per hour down to 1 or 2 per day.
The Sun Gazette published a long article about that on Sunday, and I could not resist to republish some parts of it here:
“To the extent airports are suffering, it reduces our revenue stream,” Hynes said. “Airports are important to the local economy. They don’t take our bucks, they give us bucks.”
…
According to COG’s most recent report, Dulles and Reagan National airports in 2005 employed 28,570 people, who were paid a total of about $1.28 billion. The airports took in about $6.5 billion in revenue and paid $326 million in state and local taxes and $547 million in federal taxes.
…
“Sometimes there is pressure to rezone property,” Bennett said. “The last thing we want is non-compatible land use around the airport.”
Reading that is just so good… The discussion in comments on the Sun Gazette article is quite animated, and hopefully some pro-GA users corrected some wrong things that were said by less educated ones.
As Jason recently changed homebase, our flight will no longer start from Ocala, but from nearby Dunnellon airport. The rest of the route is unchanged, we still plan to fly first to Daytona Beach and then all the way to Santa Catalina Island, and back.
Now that my flight out of Frankfurt is booked, we’ll soon work on a more detailed planning and possible events. If you live anywhere close to our route and want to meet us or possibly support us at a stop, contact us ! What we want before all is to meet locals, be they pilots or not.
From the financial point of view, Vincent’s flight ticket from Frankfurt is now booked, and a quarter of the required costs are already covered. Half of the funding comes from our own budget, the rest being your generous donations, from the sales of tee-shirts, mousepads and drinkware sales. The price of each item contains a 2 Miles donation.
We need your support more than ever to show that General Aviation is a great community and to help spread the word about it. If you have a blog, please link to our site and post about it. Facebook users can join our group or become fan of our project. You can also follow us on Twitter as @FlyingAcrossUSA.
After the tragedy that hit Haiti, our thoughts naturally go to the victims, their families and relatives. As pilots, we’re proud to know that General Aviation will be part of both the rescue and reconstruction efforts. While large aircraft bring food, water, medicine and all kind of support, light aircraft are also involved. Some pilot’s organization will fly doctors, search dogs, and many of the other things required in such sad circumstances.
Many pilots and aircraft owner are ready to volunteer their time, aircraft and money to participate in the present and upcoming efforts to relief Haiti. As often, AOPA plays an important role and provides support to pilots wanting to help.
When we say here that we want to promote General Aviation because it’s a service and help for the whole community, this is exactly what we’re thinking about. We want make people aware of the fact that General Aviation is not only “flying around for fun”. Our goal is to spread the word about this, through our flight and other activities.
To read more about AOPA actions to coordinate GA efforts, please visit the following links:
GA relief flights to Haiti start
Donate cost of flight in wake of Haiti earthquake
Aviation is not that an expensive hobby, but it still has some costs, including some administrative ones. As I have a European one, I can’t fly as Pilot In Command, unless I get an FAA-issued pilot certificate. This naturally costs time and money. A cheaper option would be to obtain a so-called “validation”. This is a pilot certificate based on a foreign pilot certificate. This also costs less time and less money, but it has some costs. An indirect effect is that pilots flying with a validation must still hold a valid foreign license and medical certificate…
While my Swiss-issued JAA license is still valid, my medical certificate will expire in February. Renewing it also has its cost, particularly as I no longer live in Switzerland but in Germany. So to save some money for this project, I decided not to get a validation nor to renew my medical certificate…
As Jason is a flight instructor, I will be able to fly with him in the right seat and log the time flown as student pilot, but there will be no way I could fly as Pilot In Command myself. This mission has however nothing to do with flying solo for fun, or increasing my PIC time. Any dollar saved is good and means more money to donate in the end. This is not an easy decision to make as pilot, but it’s the good one for our project.
Shortly before changing years, I made a new step towards the realisation of our project, which makes it feel more real… On the 30th of December, I bought my flight ticket from Frankfurt to Jacksonville and back. I will fly on American Airlines, from Frankfurt to Dallas, and from Dallas to Jacksonville, on the 18th of June, as planned.
The return flight will be along the same route, departing on the 18th of July. I paid for the ticket myself, not using any fund from your donations. As I said above, this is one more step towards this project, and I feel really excited. I also completed the required online formalities for travel authorisation, everything is ready.
We still have a lot of work to do, many things to do, finalize the route, establish more contacts, refine the planning, continue working on promotion, raise more funds… We’re now 5 months and 17 days from departure.
Thank you to all those who wished us a Happy New Year 2010 per mail, twitter, or other medium, and let us seize this opportunity to wish a happy, successful, great, extraordinary New Year 2010.
Let’s make it a great year for General Aviation!
Vincent.
After a very busy month of December, Christmas is finally here. We launched this website one year before the start of our planned flight across America, and last week we crossed the 6 months mark. After a very active initial phase, with the definition of our routes in both directions, and lots of contacts, we went through a less visible period, but be sure that our will and enthusiasm is still as strong as on the first day!
So let us wish you a Merry Christmas, and continue the preparation of this exciting adventure together.
Jason & Vincent
Here’s a new original way to support our project: buy drinkware decorated with our logo! Our online shop now contains mugs, travel mugs, can coolers, glasses. Treat yourself or your friends, and show your support to what we do.
The price of each item includes a 2 Miles purchase. You can also buy tee-shirts and mousepads decorated with artwork by Kimberly Risley. Christmas is approaching…
Since we started this website, almost six month ago, we made lots of new friends and found a lot of supporters. This post is to say a special thank you to one of them. Fernando got in touch with us during the early days of the project and was amongst the firsts to buy miles. We also had interesting discussions, he proposed some ideas and he continues. Even during this less visible phase, he’s still here and his support is very important to us.
General Aviation needs more Fernandos.
This does not reduce the importance of all our other supporters, but we wanted to say a very special Thank You to Fernando. We look forward to meet you all next year, talk about General Aviation and spread the word about how good, profitable it is, and show what a great community we are.
Beside our busy lives, we continue to prepare for our flight across America. We had not a lot of time to blog recently, mostly because life happens, but many things are going on behind the scene. We build new relationships, expand our network, collect arguments that we’ll use to promte General Aviation, refine the route, prepare details… and continue to raise funds.
For the time being, we’ve approximately 15% the budget we need. The half of it comes from your donations - thank you - and the rest from our own funding. If you feel like supporting our effort and encourage our flight, use the yellow buttons on the right hand side. You can also show your support by buying tee-shirts with our nice logo.
We’re also getting in touch with other aviation supporters, associations, organizations, and charities. Being touch with so many different people is both exhilarating and exhausting. It’s just like sensing the pulse of General Aviation. Some new supporters seem to pop-up almost daily, and our facebook fan page just passed the 110 mark recently.
If the trip itself is as intense as the preparation, which I hope, June and July 2010 will be passionating fascinating, and I’m sure we’ll come back with tons of memories and hopefully a slightly better General Aviation. Preparing the route, the details, some events, and some promotion are important, but I’m not sure anything can prepare us for all the discoveries we’ll make and all surprises that we’ll have. I hope most of them will be good…
If you live anywhere near our route and want to meet, or have funny ideas to support General Aviation, don’t hesitate to get in touch.