It’s been slightly more than a year since I’ve flown on an airliner. I certainly didn’t miss airline travel in the middle of the pandemic, but this summer’s cancellation and delay insanity created an avoidance mindset that’s pale by comparison. If my daughter didn’t live 2,000 miles away, I’d still be avoiding the airlines now that they’ve added unreliability to their bag of tricks. But I digress …

Then Brian Coleman and his buddy Micah Engber approached me with this story … one about essentially trying to fly the longest airline trips possible … and on United Airlines (my favorite airline, not) no less. I had to read the story. Brian, it seems, wants to earn United’s Lifetime Premier 1K status. The airline geeks who attempt this sort of whacky flying call this a mileage run. Brian defined a mileage run as, “A trip taken for the sole purpose of earning frequent flyer miles or points to maintain or bump the traveler up to the next status level. The trip can head anywhere in the world. The destination simply doesn’t matter.  In a mileage run, only the acquisition of miles for status is important.”

And why would anyone plant their butt in an airline seat for hours on end … for fun? Read on.

Rob

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The Ultimate Mileage Run

My Journey to United Premier 1K Status: Is It Worth Flying More Than 3 Million Miles?

By Brian T. Coleman along with Micah Engber

As of this moment, I’m 211,847 miles short of having flown 3 million miles with United Airlines. Having spent so much time on United aircraft, I asked myself the ultimate question … would I be willing to fly those final miles just to achieve Lifetime Premier 1K status? I of course say yes. But would you be willing to fly 3 million actual butt-in-seat, miles for the same status?  Am I the only crazy one here (my friends think I am!)

Brian Coleman awaits his next flight at LAX

Premier 1K status translates into lifetime benefits that include pre-boarding, free checked bags, complimentary domestic upgrades, no change fees – ever, 320 Plus Points, and a few other jewels.

To me though, achieving 1K status is about much more than just perks. I believe in the importance of goals and this has been one of mine since I reached the 2 million mile mark. I also believe the additional lifetime benefits over the life of the Platinum status I currently hold are worth the risks and costs.

About the Money

Lifetime 1K status will cost me approximately $20,000 to fly these 300,000 miles. Excluding periodic sales that I will take advantage of, the two most cost-effective routes for me are Los Angeles to Singapore (SIN – approx. 17,740 miles), and Los Angeles to Johannesburg (JNB – approx 20,870 miles). These routes have the lowest cost per mile.

Here’s the arithmetic. The average roundtrip flight should yield me 19,305 miles ((20,870 + 17,740) / 2 = 19,305 average miles). That means I must fly 16 roundtrips. If the average roundtrip economy ticket costs $1,000 (($800 + $1200) / 2 = $1,000),  I will spend $16,000 on 16 United tickets. I estimated airport parking, hotels, and miscellaneous expenses will add another $4,000, for a total of $20,000 total for the project.

About the Rewards

In my view of the frequent flyer game, the most important benefit of lifetime 1K status is the United Plus Points that can be used for domestic and international upgrades.

                 United’s Polaris Business Class

For example, when I buy International Premium Plus tickets, I can upgrade 10 segments to Polaris Business Class. That works out to five round-trip tickets every year. I can also upgrade eight International Economy segments to Polaris Business Class … for the rest of my life. That’s four round-trip tickets every year.

On average, an International Premium Plus ticket costs about $1,500. An international business class ticket runs more than $3,500, making each upgrade worth at least $2,000. If I fly four round trips a year, that makes these upgrades worth at least $8,000 ($2,000 upgrade value * 4 trips = $8,000 value). Therefore, my payback will be 2.5 years ($20,000 expense / $8,000 value = 2.5 years).

Happily Journaling

Since the benefits are worth the expenses, to me, I also decided to document my adventures and share what I’ve learned by creating a podcast I called, “The Journey Is The Reward.” On this podcast, my friend, occasional contributor, and Airplane Geeks co-host, my Main(e) Man Micah Engber (he lives in Maine BTW), discusses my experiences on these mileage-run flights. We also share aviation industry tips and tricks, explore hotel frequent guest programs, answer questions from listeners, and generally kibitz about travel, aviation, and anything else that comes to mind during the show. It’s great fun. Now I just hope United doesn’t change the program.

I hope you’ll be inspired to think about your frequent flyer status and how you can use it to your advantage like gaining the various elite status levels and the benefits that come with. Follow along on the journey, as Micah and I document the world’s largest “mileage run” at The Journey Is The Reward Podcast.

Published in 1997, Rinker Buck let the memories of his cross-country flight from New Jersey to California in a 1946 Piper PA-11 age for 30 years before sharing them in Flight of Passage. Like a fine single-malt whisky, time has refined the raw spirit of the 1966 cross-country flight the 15-year-old Rinker made with his 17-year-old brother and new private pilot, Kernahan. The brothers stripped the family Cub to its skeleton and rebuilt and recovered it the winter before they flew it from New Jersey to California and back.

Nuance and perspective are the rewards earned through the passage of time, and they are essential ingredients of beneficial reflection of a life already lived. Living in the moment is a fulfilling experience, and in aviation, it is a crucial component of safety. But it does little for appreciation of any flight of passage, especially as they are transpiring in what one might consider the white lightning of life. Over time, details subsumed by more pressing events will surface and become more relevant when viewed through the context of time and subsequent experience.

Nostalgia is another ester of time, especially for pilots of a certain age, those who started flying before the GPS era. The Buck boys traversed the nation in a Cub sans electrical system or radio. Rinker was the navigator. With a shopping bag full of aeronautical charts, he found the way to San Diego using pilotage and, across the trackless desert, dead reckoning. The anxiety resulting from the unpredictable accuracy of flying a course measured with time, speed, and distance, was succinctly clear in Rinker’s writing. And it really made me want to go flying.

Every pilot has flights that live in memory for one reason or another. As a student, I was apprehensive of pilotage and dead reckoning because I’m more comfortable with words than numbers. And then, on June 3, 1976, I made a short 1.4-hour cross-country flight from California’s Long Beach Airport (LGB) to Whiteman Airport (WHP) in Pacoima in the northeastern quadrant of the San Fernando Valley using these fundamental navigation skills. I made the flight on clenched cheeks, but when the landmarks led me to Whiteman, and I arrived within minutes of my estimation, taking a step up in self-confidence was my reward.

Since then, pilotage was my preferred form of navigation when VFR. My memory is filled with flights around the Midwest. Most of them were not unlike the Bucks’s flight of passage because I only turned on radios when I had to communicate with ATC. And that’s the great thing about aviation, appropriate to the airspace requirements, pilots can decide how they will interface with technology. Maybe this is why backcountry flying has become so popular, and why new airplanes designed for this realm, like Van’s RV-15, have been overwhelmed by this community of aviators.

Unfortunately, pilots today cannot relive one nostalgic aspect of aviation. When the Bucks flew west in 1966, red 80-octane avgas (do you remember that?) was 39 cents a gallon, Rinker writes. Their 85-hp Cub had a 10-gallon wing tank in addition to the 12-gallon fuselage tank, so it cost them $8.58 to top it off, which is, give or take some cents depending on where you live, what a single gallon of 100LL will cost pilots today. –Scott Spangler, Editor

President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948. It mandated the desegregation of the US military. Truman stood firm in the face of pushback from politicians and military officers of all ranks from all branches who opposed an integrated military. “I am asking for equality of opportunity for all human beings, and as long as I stay here, I am going to continue the fight,” he wrote in response.

The order concluded: “It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale.”

The United States Air Force was not even a year old when Truman signed his Executive Order, but its inaugural secretary, W. Stuart Symington, supported it. In December 1949, the Air Force reported that the number of integrated units had doubled between June and August of that year. Ebony magazine wrote that this effort represented the “swiftest and most amazing upset of racial policy in the history of the US military.”

In January 1949, the Air Force held its first aerial gunnery competition, then called Top Gun, at Las Vegas Air Force Base, now known as Nellis, said Lt. Col. James Harvey III (above), in the AARP Reporting for Duty YouTube episode, The Untold Story of the First Top Gun Competition. Now 98, he wears the red blazer of the Tuskegee Airmen, of which he was one, and ball cap embroidered with “1^st Top Gun Winner – 1949 P-47.”

The competition was open to all fighter groups; they would send their top three pilots and an alternate. The 82^nd Fighter Group team flew P-51 Mustangs. The teams from the 27^th, 52^nd, and 325^th fighter groups flew the hot, new P-82 Twin Mustang. The team from the 332^nd, Harvey, Alva Temple, Harry T. Stewart Jr., and Halbert Alexander, flew the obsolete P-47 Thunderbolt.

Being phased out of active duty, and with no war to fight, the Thunderbolts competed in a gunnery contest with no gunfights. But the pilots were motivated, Harvey said. Before the team left for the contest, the squadron commander, Benjamin O. Davis Jr., said, “If you don’t win, don’t come back.”

The teams would compete in four events: aerial gunnery, shooting at a towed target; strafing a fixed ground panel; dive bombing, skip bombing, and rocket firing. The P-82s of the 27^th won the aerial gunnery event with 34.720. Sighting down the Thunderbolt’s nose, and the 332nd was right behind them 32.840.

The P-51s of the 82^nd took the lead by winning panel strafing, with the Tuskegee P-47s second. Dive bombing was next, and “No one did good that day,” Harvey said. The positions did not change and the scores of the top two teams were 170.567 to 153.255. Skip bombing was another story. Each member of each member of the 332 team had a perfect score of 6 for 6, putting them in the lead with 353.255.

The 332nd won the final event, rocket firing, giving the team an overall score of 536.588. Behind them were: 82^nd 515.010; 27^th 475.325; 52^nd 253.189; 325^th 217.550. When 332^nd was announced as the winner, Harvey said, “The room was quiet. No one expected us to win. It was the last time the public would see the trophy for 55 years,” said Harvey, who went on to fly 126 combat missions in Korea and retired in 1965. “Our victory was swept under the rug.”

Historian Zellie Rainey Orr uncovered the trophy and it was put on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in 2004. Working with the Tuskegee Airmen, AARP’s Wish of a Lifetime learned of Harvey’s story and his wish to visit Nellis and see the 332nd listed first on roster of top gun winners. Working through the Air Force Foundation, AARP realized Harvey’s wish, and on January 11, 2022, a plaque was unveiled at Nellis AFB honoring this historic moment in Tuskegee Airmen history.

Actions speak louder than words in every instance. It took 73 years for the Air Force to recognize the 332^nd victory, but the group’s commander, Benjamin O. Davis became the branch’s first black general officer in 1954. He earned his second star in 1959, and a third in 1965. President Bill Clinton awarded a fourth 1998. Tuskegee Airman Daniel “Chappie” James Jr. became the Air Force’s first four star general in 1975, when the branch was just 26 years old. General Charles Q. Brown Jr. became black Air Force chief of staff in 2020, first for any service.

Roscoe Robinson Jr. became the Army’s first black four-star general officer in 1982. Admiral Joseph Paul Reason earned his fourth star in 1996. The Marines promoted their first black officer to general when Michael Langley got fourth star in August 2022, just months before the Corps’ 247^th birthday. – Scott Spangler, Editor.

Much has been made of the actors portraying naval aviators in Top Gun: Maverick being filmed in the aft seat of an F-18 Super Hornet to capture the sagging distortion of real-life g-forces. Compare that to the challenges faced by Charles “Buddy” Rogers who, in 1927, learned to fly so the camera operator, sitting backwards in the front cockpit of a World War I-era biplane, could capture him stick-and-ruddering his way through the dogfights choreographed for Wings. (And he kept flying and was a World War II Navy flight instructor.)

Wings was the last of the great silent movies and the first to win the Oscar for Best Picture at the inaugural Academy Awards in 1929. To recoup its $2 million cost ($33 in 2022 money), Paramount released it three times in three different years: The New York premiere in August 1927, in Los Angeles in January 1928, and across the United States in January 1929. Paramount released it a fourth time in 2012 with the restored original.

Available from several different sources, I recommend the DVD because it includes a special feature. To more fully appreciate this remarkable film, watch the special feature before the 144-minute restoration. While Rogers learned to fly for his role, the film’s director, William A. Wellman (right), and Richard Arlen, the other male lead, were already pilots. Wellman was a World War I pilot who saw no combat but earned the nickname of Wild Bill. Arlen flew with the Royal Canadian Flying Corps.

The drama focused on the two men, one rich, the other middle class, who were in love with the same woman, who was not Clara Bow, who had top billing. It introduced the world to Gary Cooper, whose first 90 seconds on film as a flying cadet who perished on a training flight flying figure eights, led to his star-crossed career. But the real star was Harry Perry, the cinematographer who figured out how to overcome the challenges of air-to-air movie making. And then there was the squad of “stunt pilots,” led by Rod Rogers. One of them, Hoyt Vandenburg, credited only in IMDb, taught Rogers to fly for Wings and went on to become the U.S. Air Force chief of staff from 1948 to 1953.

Vandenburg was a lieutenant stationed at Kelly Field in San Antonio, where Wellman filmed Wings with War Department support. Thomas-Morse MB-3s stood in for most of the good guys and Curtiss P-1 Hawks wore the Iron Crosses of the bad guys. More than 300 pilots participated in the aerial sequences, most of them active-duty Army aviators. And so did more than 3,500 soldiers from Fort Sam Houston (now part of Joint Base San Antonio), who recreated the epic Battle of Saint-Mihiel, on the five-acre training range it lent to the film. To prepare the battlefield, the army dug trenches and used the range for artillery training to give it an authentic shell-cratered surface.

Filming Wings took nine months, mostly because of the weather, specifically the lack of cumulus clouds that provided the necessary contrast and scale for the spectacular aerial footage. All the aviation films that have followed have been mere shadows of what Wings pioneered. And it might all have been lost, like the film’s originals negatives, had not Paramount found and restored a spare negative found in its vaults.

In 2012 Paramount released a meticulously restored hi-def version of the film on DVD and Blu-ray. They remastered and re-orchestrated the original score (remember, this is a silent movie). There’s also a pipe organ music option, which played around the nation’s smaller theaters. Skywalker Sound used archived audio tracks for the sound effects and the restorations includes the Handschiegl color process for the fires that consumed the aerial casualties. If you haven’t seen this masterpiece, treat yourself. You won’t regret it. – Scott Spangler, Editor

For an unincorporated community in the Town of Utica and Winnebago County, Fisk, Wisconsin, is without a doubt the most well-known small town in the world of aviation. Also known as Fisk Corners, its concise Wikipedia page explains its notoriety in three words: Fisk Approach Control.

As “a temporary FAA approach control facility guiding planes visually toward the active runways at Wittman Field during EAA AirVenture Oshkosh,” over the years millions have flown over Fisk, but few have ever found their way to the small white trailer on top of a hill on the way into the center of town.

In the shade of the trailer’s blue awning sit three pink-shirted FAA air traffic controllers, two scoping the sky to the south with binoculars and the man sitting between them talking almost nonstop to the pilots of the planes buzzing overhead.

It’s like the three of them are connected by some Vulcan mind meld. Both lookers are voicing instructions to the separate airplanes they have in view and the talker conveys them over the radio.

Establishing the arriving airplanes in a line at the proper speed and with the necessary separation is the goal. “RV up high, rock your wings. Piper, too fast, too high; lower your gear and flaps and come on down; there’s no one below you.” A fourth member of the team follows the Piper announces that its gear and flaps are in transit. “Good job listening,” says the first looker, and “Good job listening,” said the talker, “Welcome to Oshkosh.”

Another pink-shirted is talking to a husband and wife who found their ways to Fisk from Oshkosh. Eavesdropping on their conversation I learned that he was the facility supervisor who, along with an operation’s manager, spends the week at Fisk. Everyday starts at 0630 so the team of four controllers is ready to go when AirVenture opens for arrivals at 0700. Without any numbers, he said “it’s been a record year, and Sunday was a big day!”

Getting ready for the shift change at 1230, keeping his eyes on the sky and ears attuned to the lookers’ and talker’s steady flow of instructions, he works in answers to the visitors’ questions and prepares the charcoal grill so the incoming shift can prepare its lunch. All of the controllers seem to have developed multitasking to an impressive artform.

As AirVenture volunteers, during the week, each of the four-controller teams rotate among the four ATC facilities: Fisk Approach Control, the World’s Busiest Control Tower at Wittman Regional Airport, the temporary tower at Fond du Lac Airport (the closest divert field), and the two “Moo-Cows” (pink-shirt shorthand for mobile operating controller). Stationed on platforms adjacent to the runways, these pink shirts flag pilots on their way home into streams of arriving traffic.

With moderate winds this Thursday, controllers were using Runway’s 9/27 and 18/36 and their parallel taxiways as runways. The Moo-Cows work with a waivered hold-short line that’s closer to the active runway, so departing aircraft can safely and efficiently fill the open space in the arriving traffic flow. If something big is arriving, like the C-17 or the Boeings and Airbuses hulking over Boeing Plaza, Moo-Cows keep everyone at the everyday hold-short lines painted on the pavement, and the tower shuts-down arrivals to the parallels so the bigger arrivals have the necessary safety space.

When this situation arises, or like it did this Thursday, and the tower dedicates a runway or two to shortening the line of departing aircraft, it is up to Fisk to adjust the flow of arriving aircraft so they find their way to the arrival runways at a constant rate. When a runway is dedicated to departures, the lookers and talker barely have time to take a breath, but their tone of voices doesn’t change or resonate with any sense of stress. But when departure backlog has shrunk and is again ready for arrivals, the pink shirts can again take deep breaths between their instructions to follow the railroad tracks to Oshkosh. –Scott Spangler, Editor

Attracted to unusual and unknown aircraft, I walked past the record-setting Airbus Perlan 2 stretching its 84-foot wingspan across AirVenture’s Boeing Plaza to find out what the large, white turboprop was and why its fuselage was a series of lumps and protrusions.

Grob built the composite G520/G520T Egrett in the late 1980s, when the US government wouldn’t sell the German government any U-2s, said Roberta Vasenden of Av Experts LLC, which own the airplane, and is based at North Texas Regional Airport, just outside of Dallas.

Like the U-2 and Perlan 2, the Egrett, with its 108.25-foot wingspan, is just a big glider, she said. Powered by a Garrett 1759-shp TPE-331-14F-801L derated to 750 shp so it will deliver full power at altitude, this airplane will carry a 2,000-payload to 50,000 feet and stay there for 8 hours. And that’s why it is the Perlan 2’s tow plane. (The duo did a demonstration during the air show.)

The Airbus Perlan 2 is optimized for flight at 50,000 feet and above, and the Egrett is the most efficient and expedient way to get it there, Vasenden said. With conventional tow planes, it would take hours for the glider to find a mountain wave to lift to 50,000 feet and more time for its pilots to find a stratospheric wave that would lift it toward its 90,000-foot goal.

During the 2018 season, Perlan 2 climbed to a record 76,124 feet on September 2, 2018, higher than the published altitude record set by the U-2, and the team hopes to reach 90,000 feet, which surpasses the SR-71’s published record altitude, in 2023.

The Perlan 2 isn’t the only record holder. Signs propped up against its right main gear leg listed the Egrett’s records for Class C-1c turboprops. In September 1988 it set records for absolute altitude and horizontal flight without a payload at 53,574 feet, and time to climb to 15,000 meters (49,213 feet). And in March 1994 it set a couple of absolute altitude records when it sustained an altitude of 51, 024 feet.

The name of the pilot who flew these records was given on the National Aeronautic Association certificate of record that recognized them, Einar Envoldson, who is the founder of the Perlan Project. Not only could the Egrett tow the Perlan 2 to its optimum starting altitude of 50,000 feet, its payload and equipment bays allowed for a reel to collect the towline after the glider let go of it. As the Egrett’s pilot said, “Having a towline flopping around at 50,000 feet is not good.”

Like the Perlan 2, the Egrett is pressurized, Vasenden said. “At 50,000 feet it maintains an 18,000-foot cabin.” The pilot does not need a pressure suit, but the aviator is masked with a pressure demand oxygen system. When not towing the Perlan, the Egrett is carrying all sorts of novel payloads and new technology to altitude.

Its newest effort is the Airbus UpNext Project. One aspect of it is Blue Condor, which will take modified Arcus-J jet sailplanes, one powered by hydrogen and the other by conventional kerosene, to 33,000 feet to analyze the contrails impact on the atmosphere. After release, the Egrett, packed with emission sensors and instrumentation provided by the DLR, Germany’s aerospace center, will follow in the glider’s contrail.

Basically, Vasenden said, the project will determine if the water vapor contrails produced by the hydrogen engine is good for the atmosphere. The tests are upcoming, she said, but in May the Egrett flew the sensors and related instruments, which have never been used before, so stay tuned. – Scott Spangler, Editor

In between airplane spoon scoopfuls of his Runway Sundae at Kelley’s Country Creamery, the group’s pilots explained what attracted 15 aviators and their backcountry capable airplanes to an alfalfa field in Eden, which is just south of Fond du Lac and Oshkosh: “We’re just a bunch of pilots who get together at New Holstein every year for AirVenture and to fly around Wisconsin and eat ice cream.”

What brings these pilots together is SuperCub.org, an online community formed in 2000. An interactive community of some 12,000 registered users from across the United States and around the world who have made more than 400,000 posts, the group’s motto is “Any Plane, Any Adventure.”

SuperCub.org organizes a number of fly-in gatherings around the United States, said Rick Ness, places like Johnson Creek, Idaho, Winifred, Montana, and one or two others. New Holstein is where the group gathers for EAA AirVenture.

For the past three years (skipping the shutdown horror that was pandemic 2020), flying down to Kelley’s for dessert has been a traditional after cookout dinner activity at New Holstein. If Mother Nature cooperates, they have four opportunities starting the Friday before AirVenture officially commences.

SuperCub.org members “Paul and Dana Osmanski from Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, saw that we had this nice alfalfa field,” said Karen Kelley, owner of the eponymous creamery, “and said that it might make a nice landing strip. Jeff Russell, from Madison, is a member of the group, and they came out, looked at the field and its layout with my husband, and decided what they could do for people to land and take off safely.”

After walking off the field with a measurement wheel, and outlining the hazards (powerlines along County Road B and a couple of perimeter barbwire fences that corral the black and white Holstein cows that call the Kelley family farmstead home) on an aerial view, they felt ready to go.

“The FAA knows what we are doing, but we didn’t have to do anything special with them or any other authorities,” Karen said. “They said they were fine with it. We don’t charge [the pilots for flying in]. They like to come and have ice cream at night.”

And they aren’t the only ones. Kelley’s announces the Super Cub dessert dates and times on the creamery’s Facebook page. And they prepare for it by mowing the alfalfa field, scattering a squadron of picnic benches around its white-trimmed red clapboard structure, and attiring its outside staffers in fluorescent orange vests to keep the spectators separated from the airplanes until all of them have landed and shut down.

Once the planes are secure and the pilots have had their desserts, they welcome the crowd to have a look at their planes, ask all the questions they like, with many of the pilots hefting youngsters up on the big bush wheels and into the front seats of not only Piper Super Cubs and 21^st century Carbon Cubs but amateur-built Bearhawk Patrols, American Champion Scouts, and a mid-century Cessna 170B.

Like the SuperCub.org motto says, “Any Plane, Any Adventure.” Scott Spangler–Editor

During World War II the US military carved thousands of airfields into the American landscape. Of the hundreds that still serve our aerial infrastructure, few maintain a general connection to their original mission. An exception might be Utah’s Wendover Army Airfield, a heavy bomber training base, established in 1940 because it was surrounded by desolate desert, perfect for needed bombing ranges. Many people, not just aviation history geeks, might know of it because it is frequently mentioned in the history of America’s use of nuclear weapons. Wendover is where the 509^th Composite Squadron came together and trained for its missions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Situated just across the Nevada border, about 400 miles down Interstate 80 from Reno, it is 120 miles west of Salt Lake City. On a 1974 motorcycle trip home to Chicagoland, I passed the exit for this small city (with the 2010 census counting 1,400 residents) because of Above and Beyond, the 1952 film about Paul Tibbets, the commander of the 509^th. His wife accompanied him to Wendover, and the bleakness of these scenes led me to believe the base was miles distant in the surrounding desert, so I kept riding east. (It turns out that Davis-Monthan AFB stood in for Wendover.) Yesterday, when I learned about the relatively new Historic Wendover Airfield Museum, Google maps added another line item to my life list of missed opportunities.

Given its remote location, the airfield has served various military units off and on since VJ Day. Declared surplus for the final time in 1976, the government deeded most of the base, including runways, taxiways, hangars, hospital complex, and several warehouses to the City of Wendover for a civil airport (ENV).

The airfield made the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, the year after I passed by. Then, just a few more than 100 of its 668 World War II structures remained. Exploring them would have been more than worth the time I would have spent off the road. But the good news is that today, there are almost 90 surviving buildings, including the now-restored “B-29 Hangar” named for its most famous occupant, the Enola Gay, and the museum has a multiphase plan to restore them. Supporting this effort is the “Save Where They Walked” capital campaign.

No one knows whether I’ll pass that way again, but until then, I’ve already made a number of virtual visits on the first-class Historic Wendover Airfield Museum website, and once I’ve gotten this story scheduled for its JetWhine debut tomorrow morning, I’m spending the rest of the afternoon on the museum’s virtual tour. – Scott Spangler, Editor

Everyone knows airline flying stopped being fun 20 or 30 years ago once a deregulated industry realized just how cheaply they could package and sell their product.

Along with searching for a low-price fare these days, we’ve all had to get used to the generally lousy customer service that comes with packed airplanes. When was the last time an airline employee listened to anything you said without responding there was nothing they could do about it?

Then flying went from bad to worse when COVID-19 hit in the early months of 2020 and demand fell off the edge of the planet. It didn’t take the airlines long to solve the problem as they tried to rid themselves of staff they wouldn’t need to pay as hundreds of aircraft were grounded. They offered thousands of pilots the opportunity to take early retirement, despite the $54 Billion the U.S. government shelled out to keep layoffs to a minimum. Many accepted the deal before the airlines realized they’d collectively shot

Courtesy IMGFLIP

themselves in the foot. Near Labor Day 2020, the airlines also collectively began to realize they were going to need more pilots soon … much sooner than they’d ever thought.

Oops

Since Memorial Day this year, the need for pilots became dire as the airlines began canceling 10s of thousands of flights, stranding passengers everywhere. My daughter was on her way home from JFK to ORD that weekend when American canceled her flight after she and her fellow passengers sit at JFK for nearly four hours without so much as a sandwich or a cup of coffee. It took her two and a half days to finally make it to ORD. On July 3rd, the airlines canceled about 1,500 flights.

Just when most travelers thought airline flying could not possibly get worse, it did as inflation saw ticket prices skyrocket. Strangely, at least to me, people kept buying overpriced tickets, although I have a feeling that’s about to end. In addition to higher fares, packed airplanes, and lousy customer service, the airlines have now descended to another new low spot … they’ve become unreliable.

But at least the U.S. airlines are still safe with almost no passenger fatalities in more than a decade. But how much longer can they continue raising prices on a product they often can’t even deliver? Read the rest of this entry »

During a bimonthly recon of a used bookstore hoping that some unexpected title would catch my eye, Indestructible: One Man’s Mission That Changed the Course of World War II arrested my scan with the image of a red Beech 18 wearing prewar US red-dotted star roundels and red and white tail stripes. “A True Story,” it said, so I was curious about the Beech 18’s unusual livery. Pulling John R. Bruning’s 540-page tome from the shelf to find a back-cover explanation, the book explored the life of Paul Irving Gunn, better known during World War II as Pappy, engineer of the famed B-25 gunships that ravaged Japanese vessels with their low-level strafing runs.

My mistake was not buying this book. My mistake was starting to read it after dinner. Bruning is an efficient, clear, concise, and comprehensive writer telling a compelling story. Every page leaves you wanting to know what happens next, so you turn the page again and again and again. I didn’t get much sleep that night, or much work done the next day. If your curiosity compels you to open this book, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Before World War II and his trial-and-error engineering that turned a pirated Dutch B-25 into the gunship scourge of the South Pacific in 1942, Gunn was known by all, including his family, by his initials, PI. Those letters also represent the Philippine Islands, which is where the Gunns lived when World War II started, because PI was the driving force behind the nascent Philippine Air Lines, whose fleet consisted of four Beech 18s, all painted red, the favorite color of his wife, Polly.

With some of the only flyable aircraft in the area after the Japanese attacked the Philippines in 1941, PI was flying the Beech 18s for the Americans when the Japanese invaded Manila and interned his wife and their four children two boys, Paul and Nathan, and two girls, Connie and Julie. Bruning employs a nuanced organization that reveals the family’s existence at the Santo Tomas Internment Camp and PI’s efforts to reach Manila and free them.

This alternating narrative shows how PI became Pappy and how his life experiences led to his legendary accomplishments. In all of the other accounts I’ve read about him, people called him Pappy because he was older than those he served with, and that’s it. These presentations never explain what was behind this age difference. Pappy was older because he’d served 20 years as an enlisted Naval Aviation Pilot.

As a member of Fighting Squadron (VF) 2, known as the Flying Chiefs because many of its pilots held that rank, PI flew from the Navy’s first aircraft carrier, the USS Langley, and several that followed, including the USS Lexington and USS Saratoga. But he also flew float-plane scouts launched from cruisers and participated in simulated airborne attacks on Navy ships and stations. The make-it-up-as-you-go environment of this aviation era, when aviation, naval and otherwise, was fighting tradition unimpeded by progress, is what made Pappy such an innovator. And pervasive interservice rivalries perhaps explain why other accounts do not include this essential information.

Before catching up on my sleep after finishing the book, it was clear that Indestructible would make a great movie. And it turns out that it almost was. Sony acquired the movie rights to Bruning’s book in 2014. Mark Gordon is listed as the producer, and the only other information the interweb revealed is that the film is in “development.” All we can do is hope. –Scott Spangler, Editor