Populor Flying

Eoa, season we have the "fashionable" thing in aviation, this year the catchword is executive flying, a lush and descriptive term imported from the U.S.A. Almost any club bar or any place where flying people gather we hear of Cessna 310's, Apaches and Aztecs as well as other exotic products until recently only available to the denizens of the new world. Now the dollar restriction is cut, you, dear reader, can buy the aircraft of your choice, and using your super miniaturised auto pilot VHF, cum VOR, flash hither and thither impressing your friends and clients, you might even impress yourself with how much more experience you need to make use of this fine equipment if you are to fly about with abandon at about twice your accustomed speed. If you are of the stuff that the average amateur constructor and group member is made of the whole matter is, of course, purely hypothetical, you just cannot afford that sort of flying. However, there is no need to be despondent, the importers are also bringing in some delightful little pasture aeroplanes such as the Piper Cub range, the Cessna 150 and others. These aircraft are still a shattering price after the three hundred quid Tiger but they are value for money and no doubt a goodly number of the more fortunate will buy them.

'fhis still leaves a large and unsatisfied market of younger people, those who have not yet made enough to be comfcrtably off and middle aged, the young people in fact who if able to afford flying now would be a tremendous investment in forward and quick thinking minds in the future. What for them ? Is there not some merit in making aviation for the young "fashionable" so that the future executives will not regard flying as a novelty, but as a necessity in the make up of even a straight business man who may never aspire to the tycoon type of aviation with its flying boardrooms, but who, in the equivalent of a Messenger, in twenty years time will be hopping about all over the world on the job done by the junior executive. The government does not have to throw away millions on the project, all that is necessary for a start is for a piece of paper with a sufficiently important signature to circulate in certain quarters with a message "encourage the young to fly". Give A.T.C. cadets light aircraft to build and fly, encourage edubational establishments that making bits and pieces of little aeroplanes is not akin to a do it yourself atom bomb. Let there be a little common sense shown in establishing gliding and power flying sites where the young can spend a holiday in the great adventure of improving themselves, for this, one does not need a collossal infrastructure of controllers, marshals, etc., just a number of the early birds who still exist and who can teach sport flying for flying's sake., Then believe it or not there would be a market for little aeroplanes, British ones, at least we think so.