Colin McEnroe Show: Up In The Air
A look at the aviation industry for small planes in Connecticut.
With a huge aircraft convention coming to Hartford, we decided to get outside our own comfort zone and bring our show staff up in the air in a small plane yesterday. You'll hear that later in the show. The convention is expected to bring 7,000 visitors and a whole bunch of planes and helicopters to the city, but we also got interested in the life of small airfields around the state, so that's something we'll try to tell you a little more about today.
One thing we gradually realized is that aircraft owners and pilots are not exclusively super-rich people. In fact, coming to this convention, there seems to be just about every imaginable subculture of pilots, including a group called the UFOs -- United Flying Octagenarians.
Of course, the other prejudice about small planes is that they're not safe. I had a few shivers flying out of Brainard Airport yesterday because I covered a horrible crash there in 1978.
To see a full slideshow from our trip in the Cessna, click here.
To see a video of our trip, click here.
Leave your comments below, e-mail colin@wnpr.org or Tweet us @wnprcolin.
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EMAIL FROM TONI:
My professor husband owned half of a 1948 Stinson Station Wagon back in the late 60s. He wooed and won me by flying us to Block Island for dinner. There isn't anything more romantic than that!
He always felt safer in the small planes than in the bigger ones, but the time the passenger door came open in mid-flight and I was literally looking down on Vermont convinced me he was right.
EMAIL FROM DAVID:
I flew from near Enfield to Poughkeepsie with a guy who had recently got his license, and there were three or four people just hanging out at the tiny NY airport. They weren't pilots and I think they may have still been in high school. What's up with that?
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