A Sleek Little Jet in Every Driveway

Last night’s chill brought a cozy fire and some fun on television. The History Channel’s “Modern Marvels” was about pilots who live with their planes. There are now more than 400 communities where residents park their private planes next to their houses, and taxi right out to the runway. A California man has taken old air force bases and turned them into these plane friendly neighborhoods.

The idea of the air taxi was also discussed on the show–a new generation of small 6-passenger jets that cost less than a million each, and can fly into smaller airports. Aeronautical visionary Burt Rutan spoke about the next ten years when we will have thousands more airports, and these little planes will cut our travel time. Hub and spoke, he said, with its delays and parking hassles, will fade away and we’ll fly from town to town, using smaller jets that don’t need big long runways.
While today’s jets must accelerate to 150 mph to take off, thus needing very long runways, the smaller birds can take off at much slower speeds…so the airports that we have now will accommodate them. Soon it will be South Deerfield to South Bend, instead of BDL to ORD.