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Old 09-21-2011, 03:23 PM   #499
TheNoonans
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Daytona Beach, FL - Bedford, NH
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Default Skydive Laconia

Quote:
It always comes down to bucks!!! Somehow the LAA crowd thinks they will lose money if you come.
Your right Steveo,

They have a perception that if we show up to operate "they" will lose fuel sales because "they" believe that the jets will stop coming to LCI if parachutes are operating.

As with everything else, "they" are wrong. The jets will still fly in to Laconia. "They" will still get their fuel sales from jets.

What is comical though, as I start to read through the FOIA comments, the self entitlement of a few of the letters is absolutely mind boggling. For instance, a local lawyer who hangars a couple of planes at the airport made it clear that if LCI had a parachute operation, he would move his planes out of the hangars and leave the airport. He wrote that to the FAA.......

I mean seriously?

Okay, so let's examine this scenario: An affluent lawyer threatens that he will move his planes (plural) off the airport if the FAA allows us to operate.

And that is the FAA's responsibility how?

The truth is, if you look at the financials, if we showed up and he left, we would buy more fuel from the FBOs in a week that he would buy all year. His rent on a t-hangar or two is lost, versus us leasing out or buying a 10,000sq ft hangar.

And he expects the FAA should be concerned about him, a local lawyer picking up his toys and leaving the sandbox because he doesn't want to play by someone elses rules.

Like I said, this is the well to do, self entitled staking a claim that this is their airport, that it does not belong to the community.

Here's another:

One of the FBOs got a student pilot to write a letter to the FAA concerned that as a student, she shouldn't have to worry about parachutes in the air.

Again, Seriously?

Your training someone to be a pilot, right? And you create an unfounded air of fear and uncertainty in a student over smoke and mirrors. If I was that woman, I would be furious with my flight school for getting me involved in their turf war. It is plain as day to anyone educated in this NIMBY issue, that she was used as a pawn by the flight school. They played on the fact that she is student and doesn't know any better.

Did the flight school, as they asked her to write her letter, tell her that student pilots are trained all over the country by 100s of flight schools with parachute operations on the same airport and that none of them, literally none of them, have ever had a student pilot/skydiver issue.

Did they tell her that she will actually be a BETTER PILOT if she learns to fly on an airport that has a parachute operation? Probably not, better to scare her........

For any educator out there, and it doesn't matter the field, for an instructor to put any kind of negative fear into student's foundation of training is sure to result in inferior training results. It's undeniable and it's been published internationally by some of the most experienced educators on the planet.

So those are just two examples of the results of Mr. Hemmel's fear mongering campaign.

I could go on here, but I won't. I think you get the point.

To be honest, as I read through the letters, most everyone's concerns are based on either one of two things:

1) Self Entitlement
or
2) Lack of knowledge.

I can't help with the Self Entitled crowd, that's an incurable affliction it would seem.

But I can help with the knowledge vacuum.

There is going to come a day in the near future when the few of you out there that feel wronged by our insistence on invading "your turf" as a just cause, are going to be shocked to see our parachutes descending over the airport.

When that day arrives you can do one of two things:

1) Allow logic and reason to escape your faculties and go as bananas as you like privately and publicly.

or

2) Walk on into our hangar and introduce yourself. You will be met by two smiling happy business proprietors, my wife Mary and I.

We will welcome you in, give you all of the education materials you need to set your mind at ease and if that isn't enough, we will even coordinate getting CFIs with experience on airports with parachute operations to conduct monthly seminars for you.

Point is, we will work with anyone that wants to learn.

There really isn't any more I can offer at this point, but I think my offer is fair and just.

Blue skies to all and to all a good flight,

Tom
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