The Finish Line

At the beginning of this course a few months ago I had a dream to become a corporate pilot flying around taking vacations and playing golf on my trips. At the beginning I was also thinking about focusing a bit more on doing good with my skills and talents with flying. I believe I also made the comment that I just was going to go where ever life takes me. This is still pretty much true. Through other life experiences I have realized my amazement with the human body, as many of you know especially the heart, my big dream job would be to fly and transport organs, or help take patients to a better facility...really anything to help. It was on my mind when I started this semester and to this day is a daily re-occurring thought. I can't really say that anything in this class has changed my mind, but has definitely shined some light on topics I really wasn't that aware about, such as how far behind China is.

Not growing up in an aviation family has put me a bit behind the curve plus the fact that if there aren't cool pictures next to an article I generally don't read further than three sentences. Saying that, the fact that if I didn't do the research for the discussions my grade would have suffered really forced me to read at least five sentences with our without the picture. Out of the topics I would have to say that the most interesting was on the Regionals. It shined a bit of light on foreign land that has never really been explained to me. It must have been really apparent as to which topic I did not like the most. Call me whatever you feel like, but I have ZERO interest in the environment...need I say more?

I had a lot of fun in this class and I think it goes without saying that the best guest speaker we had were the two ladies from the TRACON. It's always been a side that is in a way mysterious to pilots, we don't understand their thought patterns and they don't understand ours. To know more about their training and how they ended up where they are now is really cool. To finally be shown how they train and whose job is more stressful helps me as a pilot on the other end to do what I can to help them as much as they help me.

As for the future I say what I said earlier...I'll go where ever it takes me. Currently I am instructing at Solo Aviation. There are many opportunities for me at Ann Arbor Airport since there are a lot of corporate companies coming in there as well as University of Michigan Health Care helicopters stored right next door. The plan is to take things one step at a time, and right now first on the list is graduation!!! Almost there :)

EU ETS stands for Emissions Trading System. Basically what this system does is controls how much emissions can be released by participants. These participants are able to sell and trade their allowance as they please just like playing cards. Each participant is given a stack of playing cards and can trade with other participants and try to get the best set to win. However you can only do what your cards allow you to do, if you go beyond that then there are consequences such as having to pay x amount of money for every bit you go over.

One of the articles handed out in class says that the money received from countries for going over their allowance is not required to be spent on environmental purposes. Plus the money that America would be losing in this would actually be put to better use here with jobs in the airlines. Honestly why not create some environmental jobs here in the states as well with that money. The U.S. has gone out of their way to try and make the world that we live in safer from carbon dioxide. By improving fuel efficiency, taking cars off the road that were dangerous to the environment and building new cars that are more affordable and better on mother nature. They didn't just improve cars, airplanes now have fuel saving engines. The U.S. is at least trying and to have someone come in and tell you it's not good enough is not they way this world should be run.

There are other countries that are not in favor such as China, and India. This money can be better spent in the countries then in the European Union. We all have neighbors some we like some we don't, but you can't force one of your neighbors to give you money because you don't like that they use a gas snow blower rather than an electric one. It's not your driveway, and not your property. If you were the one that was in charge of removing all snow in the neighborhood then by all means use your electric snow blower, but last I checked the European Union doesn't own all the airlines and all the routes in the world.

Of course EU thinks that they are trying to save the world. Look at it this way EU, if you want to reduce the amount of emissions that the aviation world gives off than reduce yours more than the other countries let off and maybe they'll follow in your footsteps, but don't force them to and then charge them money if they don't.  You think that you're really going to be hurting us by not allowing our airlines to fly into your country? Both countries will hurt from it. If EU doesn't let planes in from China then China is going to do the same thing right back, and so will other countries. In the end all EU will be doing is hurting themselves.

As for the last question, I bet you already know where I stand. If I want to wear a graduation gown made out of recycled plastic bottles than I would, but if I don't want to, then don't force me to. If I want to own a plane that let's off a lot of toxic fumes and is a hard core gas guzzler than I have the right to do so because I live in the United States of America...not Europe.