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Old 07-26-2006, 12:56 PM
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CWU1919
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Joined APC: Mar 2006
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I'm a young pilot, now 19 and I would love to share my two cents. While teenagers love video games and computer games as ironic as this is, i fell in love with flying through a computer game. Now I have a PPL and decided I love flying enough to come hundreds of miles up to a college far away from my family and my lifestyle and have decided to take a risk of pursuing my dream of making it in the industry and using college as a way to network and continue flying. But other kids my age have different hobbies. With the Xbox360 out and other systems coming, it's so much easier to hand over a few twenties for that new shooter game or the new madden nfl game and invite your buddies over along with a bunch of 6 packs of bud light and get drunk, smoke, and play video games. I guess the bottomline from what I have seen is that many kids my age actually do think the concept of flying is neat, but in the end very few are willing to dedicate the time, the enormous costs, and the commitment at such a young age.
Another point I think that is hurting aviation is the image it casts itself to young people. "Cool" and "chill" were thrown around alot in my high school and the concept of aviation and the main groups who promote aviation, e.g. AOPA, EAA, etc. I personally don't think make it very cool or chill. It's always pictures of the stereotypical dork guy or girl with a conservative look wearing a golf shirt,screw that, people tell me that I don't look like a pilot, I look like a punk who skateboards and boozes and gets high with his friends all day, that's what people cast me out to be on first impression. I don't want the new aviators of the sky to be total geeks who have no life outside of aviation, but most of all, I don't want aviation to have a stereotype, I want to meet cool people in the field, but people who have other passions in life and our down to earth, not the geeks. The image of what flying is ****es me off. All the promoters of flying like AOPA and EAA often can't relate to younger people very well because the young folks of today live different lifestyles than the older folks did when they were younger, times were just different back then, they didn't have all the distractions and activities kids today do.
It's going to be a difficult solution. I think though that one key would be to mix youth with youth, take young people in aviation who have other passions in life and do all the other things any adolescent would do and let them talk to the other young folks who have doubts or preconotations. Let them tell the others their love for flying and how they've made it work and be a part of their lives while still enjoying the same joys and activities of any teenager or young person. That right there I think, is a start.
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