The troubles of the airline system have become acute in the post-terrorist era. As the average cost of a flight has come down in the last twenty years, the airlines have survived by keeping planes full and funneling traffic through a centralized hub-and-spoke routing system. Virtually all of the technological innovation in airplanes in the last thirty years has been devoted to moving passengers more efficiently between major hubs. But what was left out of this equation was the convenience and flexibility of the average traveler. Now, because of heightened security, hours of waiting are tacked onto each trip. As James Fallows vividly explains, a technological revolution is under way that will relieve this problem. Free Flight features the stories of three groups who are inventing and building the future of all air travel: NASA, Cirrus Design in Duluth, Minnesota, and Eclipse Aviation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. These ventures should make it possible for more people to travel the way corporate executives have for years: in small jet planes, from the airport that's closest to their home or office directly to the airport closest to where they really want to go. This will be possible because of a product now missing from the vast array of flying devices: small, radically inexpensive jet planes, as different from airliners as personal computers are from mainframes. And, as Fallows explains in a new preface, a system that avoids the congestion of the overloaded hub system will offer advantages in speed, convenience, and especially security in the new environment of air travel.
General aviation encompasses all the ways aircraft are used beyond commercial and military flying: private flights, barnstormers, cropdusters, and so on. Authors Janet and Michael Bednarek have taken on the formidable task of discussing the hundred-year history of this broad and diverse field by focusing on the most important figures and organizations in general aviation and the major producers of general aviation aircraft and engines. This history examines the many airplanes used in general aviation, from early Wright and Curtiss aircraft to the Piper Cub and the Lear Jet. The authors trace the careers of birdmen, birdwomen, barnstormers, and others who shaped general aviation—from Clyde Cessna and the Stinson family of San Antonio to Olive Ann Beech and Paul Poberezny of Milwaukee. They explain how the development of engines influenced the development of aircraft, from the E-107 that powered the 1929 Aeronca C-2, the first affordable personal aircraft, to the Continental A-40 that powered the Piper Cub, and the Pratt and Whitney PT-6 turboprop used on many aircraft after World War II. In addition, the authors chart the boom and bust cycle of general aviation manufacturers, the rising costs and increased regulations that have accompanied a decline in pilots, the creation of an influential general aviation lobby in Washington, and the growing popularity of “type” clubs, created to maintain aircraft whose average age is twenty-eight years. This book provides readers with a sense of the scope and richness of the history of general aviation in the United States. An epilogue examining the consequences of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, provides a cautionary note.
2003 marks the centennial of manned flight, a major anniversary for an Earth-shattering accomplishment. The papers contained in this volume were presented at the 2003 American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting.
“A delightful, and surprisingly moving, tale” -- Michael Lewis, bestselling author of Moneyball “Karlgaard flies in with a companion concept to David Brooks’s On Paradise Drive” -- Tom Wolfe “While counterintuitive to those on the conventional fast-track, Life 2.0 offers great promise to those who are open to personal innovation” -- Clayton Christensen, Professor, Harvard Business School “This fascinating treatise will make you think deeply, and may just give you the impetus to uproot” -- Tom Peters “An original and exhilarating look at options many Americans don’t realize are now open to them.” -- James Fallows, national correspondent, The Atlantic Monthly “Not only will it widen the horizons of your life, it could also renew your health and wealth.” -- George Gilder Have You Found the Where of Your Happiness? One of the intriguing things about the United States is the idea of the second chance, that when you feel stuck there is always a frontier you can cross to reinvent yourself. In Life 2.0, Rich Karlgaard used his own personal and professional midlife crises to look at the state of the American dream—the belief in continuous personal upward mobility—and where it stands in the twenty-first century. At the ripe old age of forty-five, Karlgaard fell in love with flying and mastered the art of lifting up and bringing down a “2,500-pound aluminum box kite”—a four-seat single-engine airplane. As the publisher of Forbes he felt that he was doing too much armchair theorizing and didn’t really understand how Americans were responding to the changes that had started taking place so swiftly over the past few years. So he put together his new flying skills and reportorial mission and flew around America to places like Green Bay, Wisconsin; Bozeman, Montana; Fargo, North Dakota; Des Moines, Iowa; and Lake Placid, New York, to gain some insight into how ordinary Americans are untangling the knotty problems of constant stress, crushing expense, and bewildering hassle that often characterize life in the nation’s urban centers. He discovered their simple solution: they moved. What Karlgaard found on the road are fascinating and inspiring stories about people— those with a nose for entrepreneurship, a faith in technology, and the willingness to take a chance—who are finding the new American dream in places as far from New York City and Silicon Valley as you can imagine. Some of those people include: • A burned-out insurance exec who fled his overworked East Coast life and settled in tranquil (yet dynamic) Des Moines • A tool broker who traded his brick-and-mortar business in sunny California for a life in the Pennsylvania hills, where he relaunched his business on the Internet • A road-warrior democracy specialist who conducts her worldly affairs from the low-key outpost of Bismarck, North Dakota • A self-made millionaire who paid for his financial success with his first marriage and who did things differently the second time around by moving to smaller cities and focusing on family as well as work Adroitly combining analysis of the economic and social trends challenging middle-class people with perceptive advice on how to escape the rat race of the coasts, Karlgaard explores the eye-opening possibilities of that huge tract of land often carelessly dubbed “flyover country.” Filled with stories of personal reinvention and triumph, Life 2.0 is the story of those who are living larger lives in smaller places.
In a breakthrough Organization Man for the twenty-first century, bestselling author Art Kleiner reveals that every organization is driven by a desire to satisfy a Core Group of influential individuals and explains why understanding this group’s expectations is the key to success. When corporate leaders announce, with seeming sincerity, “We make our decisions on behalf of our shareholders,” their words are taken at face value. But as recent news stories prove, this imperative is routinely violated. In Who Really Matters, Art Kleiner argues that the dissonance between a declared mission and actual operation can be seen at organizations large and small. All organizations have one motive in common. Every decision—which projects to back, who to promote, or how to spend money—is affected by the perceived wants and needs of a core group of people “who really matter.” The composition of the group can differ from organization to organization. Often, the most senior people in the hierarchy are members—but not always. Sometimes, the people who “matter” can extend far down the corporate ladder, or even reach outside the company to include key customers, labor union leaders, and stockholders. Kleiner gives readers clues about how to identify a core group’s real mission by observing its day-to-day actions, listening to the fundamental message it sends employees, examining its management of new members; understanding the ideas that shape its policies about management, money, and the way the world works; and avoiding the taboos governing the way it operates. Whether you’re a member of the Core Group—or want to be—this deft, engaging blend of argument and observation, anecdotes and advice, is the one guide you’ll need to achieve your career goals and aspirations by navigating the hidden pathways in any organization, large or small.
Drawing upon hundreds of mainly secondary sources, this book answers three questions: how did air transportation develop in the century after the Wright Brothers, what does it mean to live in an airborne world, and what is the future of aviation in this century?
In the visionary tradition of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, One Square Inch of Silence alerts us to beauty that we take for granted and sounds an urgent environmental alarm. Natural silence is our nation’s fastest-disappearing resource, warns Emmy-winning acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton, who has made it his mission to record and preserve it in all its variety—before these soul-soothing terrestrial soundscapes vanish completely in the ever-rising din of man-made noise. Recalling the great works on nature written by John Muir, John McPhee, and Peter Matthiessen, this beautifully written narrative, co-authored with John Grossmann, is also a quintessentially American story—a road trip across the continent from west to east in a 1964 VW bus. But no one has crossed America like this. Armed with his recording equipment and a decibel-measuring sound-level meter, Hempton bends an inquisitive and loving ear to the varied natural voices of the American landscape—bugling elk, trilling thrushes, and drumming, endangered prairie chickens. He is an equally patient and perceptive listener when talking with people he meets on his journey about the importance of quiet in their lives. By the time he reaches his destination, Washington, D.C., where he meets with federal officials to press his case for natural silence preservation, Hempton has produced a historic and unforgettable sonic record of America. With the incisiveness of Jack Kerouac’s observations on the road and the stirring wisdom of Robert Pirsig repairing an aging vehicle and his life, One Square Inch of Silence provides a moving call to action. More than simply a book, it is an actual place, too, located in one of America’s last naturally quiet places, in Olympic National Park in Washington State.
This book looks at changing managerial styles in business and the predominance of risk aversion behavior over risk taking behavior. The author explores the various reasons (regulation and media scrutiny among them) that corporations are becoming more timid and analyzes the consequences this could have on the future of innovation and technological development in the business future.
Covering field history and discussing actual modern-day pilot actions and tasks, the editors of this volume have integrated contributions from leaders in aviation to present psychological principles and research pertinent to the interface between a pilot and the cockpit. The book addresses the pilot‘s cognitive demands, capabilities, and limitations, which have important implications for operator selection and training as well as display/control designs in the cockpit. It emphasizes scientific methods of achieving this understanding and implies that theories and principles of human behavior are shaped and improved by practical problems and applied studies.
