Coming up, tornadoes ripped through Tennessee
and GA airports are left in shambles.
The future of flight is now or is it?
A hot new paint job
on your good as new hot rod,
the new look for your RV-10 sweepstakes airplane.
AOPA Live This Week begins in just moments.
I believe that trust is something that you earn over time.
It's not something that you have right away.
We've been repairing headsets for years now,
and I personally have been repairing headsets for 11 years.
When a customer sends in their headset,
they trust that it will be repaired
and it will be perfect.
This is AOPA Live This Week,
with Tom Haines and Alyssa Cobb.
Right now,
dozens of families are grieving lost loved ones.
Many more are picking up pieces
of what used to be their homes
and communities around the Nashville area are rallying
to help those affected.
A tornado producing at least EF-3 level damage
ripped through Nashville area overnight on March 3rd.
At the time we'll record this,
the death toll is at 24 and hundreds of homes destroyed.
Also, at the center of the tornado's destructive path,
several general aviation airports.
John C. Tune airport on the city's west side was decimated.
Hangars full of business jets down to piston singles
tossed around like toys.
This airplane unrecognizable.
What appears to be a Cirrus CAPS chute
strewn over wrecked cars.
The airport appears to have taken a direct hit.
It's closed while crews work to sort through the wreckage.
No injuries reported from the field,
but it's complicated by fuel trucks that blew up
and caught fire in the storm.
And the storms rolled all the away across the metro area.
These photos from the Lebanon Municipal Airport
east of Nashville.
The damage was not as severe as that Tune,
but it left a number of airplanes likely totaled
and hangars severely damaged.
Crews are still working to restore power to the airport
as of this taping.
I was shocked to see those images.
Yeah.
You know I've been covering general aviation for 35 years,
seen lots of airports damaged by hurricanes,
sometimes by tornadoes,
and I have never seen destruction like that
as many airframes.
Yeah.
One report was 90 million dollars worth of damage
to the airport itself not including the airframes.
So some of the Falcon and some of the other big airplanes,
you know, those are tens of millions of dollars a piece,
plus all the little airplanes too and it's a real shame.
Yeah and just the destruction you see there at the airport
and then imagining that all across the Nashville area.
Now, the aviation community is already rallying
to help those affected by the storms.
That's one thing I love about the GA community.
The Aircraft Electronics Association has had their annual
convention planned for later this month in Nashville.
The venue is unaffected
and the show is going on, but AEA is now giving a portion of
the proceeds from a silent auction
to help those affected by the tornadoes.
It's a rulemaking process
that has really stirred up a buzz in the
model airplane community.
More than 30,000 people chiming in about the proposed rule
to ensure that virtually all unmanned aircraft
can be tracked and identified.
Now, AOPA is telling the FAA to leave room
for low-risk drone ops.
AOPA has long supported safe integration
of drones into the National Airspace System
and has worked for years with fellow stakeholders
to safely advance the technology.
AOPA has been called on
to advise the FAA on a range of issues
including remote identification of drones.
AOPA is telling the feds
that requiring the individual registration
of low-risk and low-cost model aircraft
that are required to operate within line of sight,
that does not increase public safety or security.
Now the FAA will review the tens of thousands of comments
and may or may not make changes
to the final rule on remote identification.
It's visionary, it's audacious, it's inspirational,
it might be dang near impossible but hey,
that's the whole point of an aspirational challenge.
The two million dollar GoFly competition
for a personal flying machine.
So I hope that in 20 years from now,
we are all flying like Superman and Harry Potter.
How do you make people fly?
Launch a global competition.
To fly like a bird,
or Superman, or even Harry Potter.
Two and a half years ago, serial entrepreneur Gwen Lighter,
convinced Boeing and other sponsors
to put up more than two million dollars in total prize money
and a challenge to create a personal flying machine.
Look, defying gravity is incredibly hard.
And the competition rules made it even harder,
including size limits and requirement to not have rotors
or structure above the pilot.
The entrance ranged from solo dreamers,
Flies and hovers, fits in your garage.
Everything you'd ever want for excitement and thrills
and it may or may not cost you a wife.
To small teams,
It's not just a tech toy,
it's our way of sharing our message with the world.
We really wanna push innovation and imagination.
Especially for kids and this is like,
this is my way to get enough attention
that I can channel that onto something good.
To companies building technology demonstrators,
We'd like to sell ducted propellers to everyone
that wants to use this.
We see it as an enabling technology for any application,
where size, noise, and safety are critical.
To university research programs.
And then, we want to generate more resources
and use GoFly as a springboard
to develop further prototypes,
and eventually get this to market.
On the first day of the GoFly competition,
demonstration flights.
(aircraft whirring)
Ooh!
(aircraft whirring)
Well, we said this was hard.
Now, day two was supposed to be the actual fly off
but the wind was too stiff.
Now, in truth, only one of
the finalists could have flown the dragon air hoverboard
but a landing mishap the day before disqualified the machine
so, no winners this year.
That grand prize is still up for grabs,
so our teams can compete for that.
We look forward to anyone else
that's interested in joining us.
Feel free to reach out to us at info@goflyprize.com
to find out more about it,
but that grand prize is still open
to anybody who wants to take up that challenge.
But, the Tetra team from Japan did win the Pratt & Whitney
100,000 dollar disruptor prize for--
Team that challenged the status quo,
delivered unique thinking into a complex issue,
and considered safety, reliability, durability,
and system integration.
And although the Tetra team has yet
to fly a manned prototype--
We are not going to stop. We want to develop it as much.
We want to be the first to show the world
that yes, this kind of technology is possible
and everyone can have it.
We are going to make it so safe
that anyone can just wake up in the morning
and, "I want to buy it." And they can go and buy one.
All of the teams are continuing.
The dream of a personal flying machine really isn't
that far away.
As a child, I always wanted to fly.
My sister and I would make crazy contraptions
and throw ourselves out of trees to see if we could fly
and decades and decades later,
when I started learning about all of this,
the convergence of breakthrough technologies,
we realized that it was the first moment in history
where we actually had the ability
to make people fly in that way of our childhood dreams.
Warren Morningstar, AOPA Live.
You know, my childhood dream that I tried out was
Mary Poppins with an umbrella during a thunderstorm, yes.
Woah, that's a risk there.
(Alyssa laughs)
I didn't know at the time.
But those would be fun to try out
once they get a little further along, you know?
Those landings looked a little scary.
It did, I was out there last week
and got to see some of them and talk to some of the folks
and it was a little scary,
but really inspirational at the same time
to see, you know, mostly young people on the teams
with some of the universities and whatnot,
really throwing their heart and soul into this
and trying to make this happen
and probably none of the products
that we actually saw are ever gonna go anywhere in
and of themselves,
but there's lots of foundations being built from these,
some future products.
So be fun to see where that goes.
It will.
Yeah, good for them.
Well hey,
a major acquisition in the fractional ownership world,
Wheels Up buying Gama jet, to take on market leader NetJets.
It makes Wheels Up
the second biggest private aviation company in the
United States.
Last year, Wheels Up bought Delta Private Jets.
The company was founded in 2013
with an emphasis on short-haul turboprop segments.
The purchase sets them up
to compete better in the longer jet market.
Terms of the deal were not released.
(calm music)
Coming up, the AOPA online flight planner is going away
and what that means to you.
And your RV-10 sweepstakes airplane
is looking great in new paint.
But first, we have sad news again this week, another loss.
James Lipton was an icon on stage and screen.
He passed away at his Manhattan home on Monday.
The longtime host of Inside the Actors Studio
was an avid general aviation pilot.
For many years,
he proudly wore his AOPA member wings on his show,
leading to an iconic exchange
with comedian Robin Williams in 2001.
In 2012, Lipton sat down with AOPA Live
to talk about his love for flying.
What is your favorite aviation activity?
Well, flying an airplane.
Knowing that I've just rotated
and lifted off the runway
and that now it's up to me. That's the favorite activity.
But, if you were to ask a broader question,
an event or times that you've had in the airplane
to enjoy the most,
my wife and I have a home in the Hamptons
and we frequently have gone to the airport,
got into a plane, with a couple of friends in the backseat,
my wife in the right seat, me in the left.
This is in a Cessna 172 four seater.
Say, 4:30, five o'clock in the afternoon,
beautiful summer day, take off and go to Nantucket
or Martha's Vineyard.
45 minutes after we take off,
I land at Martha's Vineyard say, or at Nantucket,
park the plane, get out, go to dinner,
my wife and my friends have a drink and enjoy themselves,
I do not of course because I'm flying the airplane
and besides, I don't care much about drinking anyway,
so it's no loss, but have a wonderful dinner.
By eleven o'clock, we go back to the airport and it's dark.
They closed down of course out there,
and I click my microphone five times,
and it lights up. I lit up an entire airport.
Green, and blue, and red, and white,
I turned on an airport!
I go to the end of the runway, take off,
45 minutes later, I'm tying down in east Hampton,
and 15, 20 minutes later, my guests and my wife and I
have all gone to our respective beds,
and we're going to sleep, blissfully to sleep.
That's an adventure.
That's a lovely way to spend an evening for me.
I can't think of a better way.
Assuming heaven is real and it has an airport,
what do you want the Wright brothers
to say to you when you taxi up to the ramp?
"My god! You greased that landing!"
That's what I wanna hear.
I greased it, from the Wright brothers.
What greater praise could I ask for?
Well, you can find our full interview
with him on our AOPA Live YouTube channel,
look for Ten Questions with James Lipton.
Lipton was 93 years old. We'll be right back.
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Welcome back. To everything, there's a season.
And that includes aviation safety.
The AOPA Air Safety Institute and Hartzell Propeller
are bringing pilots a topical series
based on the time of year.
ASI executive director, Richard McSpadden,
says the first episode is meant to help break off any rust
that formed over these winter months.
You know, if you look throughout our flying calendar,
there's certain inflection points
where flying just changes a little bit differently,
and to start out with,
our first episode is called,
"Out of Hibernation: The Awakening."
So, we all haven't been flying quite as much as we used
to in the winter, so we're a little a bit rusty,
our skills aren't where they were when we dropped off,
so it's about how do we get back up,
kinda come through our spring training
and get back into flying again.
The whole series is sponsored by Hartzell,
and we're so delighted that they stepped up
to sponsor the series for us.
Seasons of Safety will debut live
on the Air Safety Institute YouTube channel,
this Thursday, March 5th, 8 p.m. eastern,
it'll be archived there, in case you miss it.
Women in Aviation International
and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
are launching a free course for girls ages eight to 17.
The online self-pace program starts later this month.
The course leverages Embry-Riddle expertise
and instructional design to inspire the next generation
of aviation professionals.
Students will be able to explore aviation terminology,
identify the major parts of an airplane,
describe flight characteristics of a helicopter,
and discuss the goals of space exploration.
Find more details on the Women in Aviation website.
AOPA is speaking up in favor of a bill
that would be for the NCAA,
and it's not the one you're thinking of.
It would create something called
the National Center for the Advancement of Aviation.
The private entity would get no general taxpayer funding.
It is designed to allow stakeholders to come together
to make sure the U.S. remains competitive
in the global aviation and aerospace industries.
The bipartisan idea has support from
many other aviation groups.
You can read more about it on our website.
A couple of aviation apps are losing support sadly
and one of them is our own, AOPA online flight planner.
This popular program for desktop computers is powered
by a Jeppesen map engine,
but that engine has become obsolete
and Jeppesen won't support it any longer,
so the AOPA online flight planner won't be available
after April, but we're working on some options.
The AOPA online flight planner does have some unique,
really good features.
And we are working with the industry
to try to get an option, or options, for pilots to
incorporate as many of those features as possible,
either immediately or overtime.
Now, we're still working
with a couple players in the industry
to try to get us the best product possible,
and we don't have much to inform pilots about yet
and we are trying to move as quickly as possible
to get the information out there.
That same Jeppesen engine powers
the QuickClear customs clearance app,
it too will sunset this week.
Well, next time you see it, you won't recognize it.
The AOPA sweepstakes RV-10 is fresh out of the paint shop
and it looks like a completely different airplane.
AOPA editor-at-large, Dave Hirschman, has more.
(calm music)
It's restoration is finally complete.
Your AOPA sweepstakes RV-10 is as close to perfect
as we can make it.
Exterior paint was the last big job,
and Craig Barnett of Scheme Designers,
and Kendall Horst of Lancaster Aero,
hit the ball out of the park.
They've given this former diamond in the rough a stunning,
endurable new look.
One of the main design goals remains consistent
and that's for the aircraft to get noticed.
You really want it to stand out at shows
and you really want members to be able
to identify it really easily.
They've replaced
the airplane's former fading,
peeling, weather-beaten yellow
with a lustrous red, glossy black, and sparkling gold.
With this particular aircraft,
one of my criteria was no white.
We wanted bright, bold colors
to really show what fun on RV-10 is.
And the craftsmen at Lancaster Aero
did much more than simply strip and paint the airplane.
They repaired damaged fiberglass, replaced old hardware,
and added a much more secure latching system to both doors.
At Lancaster Aero,
we like to look at it from a mechanical point of view,
where we need to fix the problems
before we repaint the aircraft.
Now, the AOPA sweeps RV-10 is ready
to meet aviation enthusiasts around the country.
Look for it at air shows and AOPA fly-ins,
where it will showcase exceptional aviation technology,
craftsmanship, and value.
Late this year,
when the leaves have fallen and the days are getting short,
it will be awarded as
the grand prize in the 2020 AOPA sweepstakes.
Good luck to you and that drawing.
Dave Hirschman, AOPA Live.
Wow, that looks great.
I saw it for the first time a couple days ago
and then we did another photo shoot with it this week,
and in the sky it looks stunning against the bright,
blue sky, holy cow, it's really nice.
Yeah, it is.
Somebody's gonna have a wonderful airplane.
Absolutely beautiful.
I wish I could run, maybe we can change the rules.
I don't know that's gonna happen,
but good luck to you on that one.
Thanks. Well, that's our program for the week.
Thank you very much for watching.
Yeah, go ahead, like, comment, and subscribe
on our YouTube channel, tell your friends,
send us your thoughts the old-fashioned way if you prefer.
The address is there on your screen, see you next week.
(calm music)
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