A photo caption with a July 26 Business article misidentified three men. A corrected caption appears here.
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Not Wanting to Earn Their Wings
Some companies sell kits so pilots can build their planes. Such kits can cost less than $10,000. And there is a large market for used planes, which are far cheaper than new ones.
Some enthusiasts say that because of improvements in safety, thrill-seekers may no longer be attracted to flying. The FAA reported that in general aviation, there were 1.37 fatal accidents per 100,000 flight hours last year, down from 1.69 in 1980.
Photos
Up in the Air Thousands of pilots and more than 7,000 planes are descending on Wittman Regional Airport in Wisconsin for the Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture Oshkosh 2006 show. |
Jerry Sprayberry, 62, a telecommunications executive from Dallas, sat under the wing of his single-engine Cessna, drinking beer and shooting the breeze with three buddies. They traded stories about "white-knuckle flights" and "near-death experiences." (A couple from Washington state died on Sunday when their plane crashed short of the runway here.)
Sprayberry said he didn't have any such experiences. One of his friends crashed his propeller plane into a tree years ago; another said he flipped his plane in strong winds.
Sprayberry got into flying when he was a kid and loved to ride his bicycle to the airport and watch planes take off and land. Hoping to get a new breed of pilots into flying, he participates in a program in which he takes teenagers on flights in his plane to stoke their interest. So far, most haven't seemed all that interested, he said.
"Today's youth don't want to do anything that is so regimented" as learning to fly, Sprayberry said. "When I was young, aviation had some adventure to it. We didn't get to do a lot of things with adventure. Today, there are lots of things that have adventure."
Dennis Clardy, 58, who flew in from Arkansas, said he was building a plane for his grandchildren. But he conceded that it might be a pointless endeavor.
"They view the airplanes as transportation, just like a car," Clardy said. "I would be happy to take off and fly around for half and hour. They don't want to do that . . . I might be lucky and have one grandchild who wants to learn."
Winston Slater, 58, brought his wife and 21-year-old son to Oshkosh for the week and got a prime parking spot across from one of the runways so he could sit in a beach chair and just watch planes take off and land.
While watching three planes take off at the same time in an aerobatic maneuver, he said he worries about the future. Looking up and down the rows of planes, he said: "I don't see a lot of new blood."
