Economics Lessons From The Obits
Chris Edwards posts at Cato on the death of "Albert Ueltschi, 'who founded aviation-training company FlightSafety in 1951 [and] expanded it into an international powerhouse.'" Quoting a Bloomberg obit:
As pilot of Pan American's first corporate plane . . . Ueltschi hit upon the idea of opening a testing and training center for the booming aviation industry in the 1950s.That company today is FlightSafety International Inc., which bills itself as the world's leading aviation-training company, teaching pilots, aviation mechanics, flight attendants, dispatchers and others each year.
...After graduating from high school in 1934, he opened a hamburger stand and used the proceeds to take flying lessons. A year later he borrowed $3,500 to buy an open-cockpit bi-wing airplane, the Waco 10, and made it his next business venture. "I took people up for a dollar a hop, gave lessons, and even put on air shows."
...[I]n 1951, Ueltschi borrowed $15,000 by mortgaging his house and opened FlightSafety at LaGuardia's Marine Air Terminal.
Edwards has it just right:
In subsequent years, Mr. Ueltschi worked his tail off juggling two jobs and building what would become a multibillion part of the U.S. economy. The government did not build FlightSafety. Nor did the government build the thousands of other firms and industries that comprise the bulk of the U.S. economy, such as the electric guitar industry, as I discuss here.To revive the economy, we need fewer central planners like Ben Bernanke and more decentralized business-builders like Albert Ueltschi. We need more firms like FlightSafety and less like Solyndra. Both candidates for president are promising to create jobs, but what we really need is for the government to get out of way of the people who create companies and industries.
Thank god the government didn't get in his way by taxing the citizens to build airports and the highways and regulations required to support, well, everything that he needed to make this happen.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at October 24, 2012 10:54 AM
Wow, Amy. You never cease to amaze me. Do you realize that you have beaten a lot of the trade maganizes to the punch with this? If you ever decide you want a career change, you should look into writing for the aviation industry.
Anyway... a lot of people don't realize how safety in the industry works. There's this perception that the FAA is sitting on high, telling everyone else how to do their jobs. For the most part, that's not how it works. What happens is that the five facets of the industry -- the airlines, the private pilots, the aerospace companies, the academic researchers, and the military -- recognize a problem and develop some potential solutions. Then they test, analyze, do operations, and see how it works. Once the industry has agreed on a solution, the FAA codifies what has been done and agreed to. The FAA guys aren't fools; they know good and darn well that they don't have the time or personnel to be the driver of innovation in the industry, and anyway it isn't really their role. The FAA basically sets the minimum standards that are acceptable for a given product or operation; the industry often takes it upon itself to go beyond that.
(And Gog: airports are funded largely out of aviation fuel taxes, ticket taxes, landing fees, and fees on licenses. The exceptions are mainly where a city or a region wants to expand an airport to increase its traffic. Not saying there isn't a certain amount of sleaze in the process, but for the most part, the non-flying taxpayer is not on the hook.)
Cousin Dave at October 24, 2012 11:46 AM
"the non-flying taxpayer is not on the hook"
I'm not saying they are.
I'm saying the "you didn't build that" meme is utter twisted bullshit from the ignorant far right taken out of context and meant to make people, like the successful businessman illustrated here, look like they succeed in spite of the government.
They don't.
They succeed AND the government has created an infrastructure not only of highways, power, water, regulatory agencies, funding, tax benefits, but of overall support to encourage businesses of many stripes.
To pretend that the businessman exists as a noble warrior in spite of Marxist looter interference is ignoring all evidence to the contrary.
Intentionally irrational at best, dangerously stupid at worst.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at October 24, 2012 12:19 PM
Thank god the government didn't get in his way by taxing the citizens to build airports and the highways and regulations required to support, well, everything that he needed to make this happen.
We built that, too. Don't ever forget: the government has no money of its own, what it gets it gets from us. Unless, of course, you want to make the argument that he paid no such taxes, or that those who graduated from his school and went on to get jobs in the airline industry also didn't pay taxes.
I'm going to go out on a small limb and say that the resulting taxes paid out by Ueltschi and his students will be greater than what the government shelled out to build and maintain the airports in the first place.
I R A Darth Aggie at October 24, 2012 12:50 PM
It's not my primary area of knowledge, but do you suppose government mandated safety training for pilots and aviation industry employees might have played a part in creating and growing a market for FlightSafety's services?
Factual Interjection at October 24, 2012 3:26 PM
Factual, what I said above... the government basically codified what the industry was already doing. The dual instruction and sim training concepts go back to the 1930s, well before the FAA existed.
Cousin Dave at October 24, 2012 5:54 PM
I have no problem with codifying industry standards. My problem is when the codifying says that the trainer has to be qualified on multi-engine aircraft when he can fly a Piper Cub well and teach his students how to fly a single engine light aircraft with skill.
I would like to learn how to fly at some point. But I don't want to fly a 757. Why does my instructor need to know how to fly a 757 to teach me to fly a single engine aircraft.
The equivalent would be requiring a passenger car driver to be trained by someone who has a CDL. Why?
Jim P. at October 25, 2012 8:20 PM
JimP....don't understand your comment. A flight instructor does not require either an Airline Transport Pilot rating or a type rating for the 757 or other large aircraft.
A flight instructor in the U.S. *does* need a Commercial pilot's certificate, which is a general requirement to aviate for money, and an instrument rating, which makes sense given that private pilots are supposed to learn the basics of instrument flight. Neither the written test nor the practical test for the Commercial requires knowledge/skill/experience with large aircraft.
david foster at October 26, 2012 5:33 AM
Jim, it's what David said... If you only have a private ticket, you can fly but you cannot engage in commerce, e.g., carry paying passengers. You need a commercial ticket for anything in which you accept money for getting in the cockpit. The commercial ticket itself is not a big deal. And unless things have changed, there are a range of instructor ratings. A lot of instructors, once they get their initial instructor rating, go for the additional ratings because there is more money instructing corporate and air taxi pilots than there is in instructing private pilots.
Cousin Dave at October 26, 2012 8:10 AM
Ask The Pilot has lots of material about this.
Radwaste at October 27, 2012 5:57 AM
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