May 18, 2021 Critters Lodge

The Liberty Gazette

May 18, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: It was time for our semi-annual short trek north to Centerville, to our favorite fly-in. Having been weather-delayed by a week, it became a beautiful Mother’s Day event shared with moms, dads, kids, and grandparents from all around these parts, everyone enjoying a perfect family weekend camping with airplanes. Experimental and factory-built aircraft, Cessna, Piper, Grumman, Van’s RV, Beechcraft, and others descended on Beverly and Wendall Dillard’s airplane ranch called Critters Lodge.

Okay, so the weather wasn’t perfect, but it was flyable, if you don’t mind a few potholes in the sky. Ceilings were about 1,500 feet, meaning there was that much room between the ground and the base of the clouds. No nosebleed flying for us that day! But it was also rather gusty. Winds at some airports were reported at 11 knots, gusting to 24 or so. That’s not a problem if you’re landing and taking off straight into it. But if you have a 90-degree crosswind trying to blow you away from the runway, there is that “maximum demonstrated crosswind capability” of the airplane of which one must be mindful. There’s a saying about that. It has to do with becoming a test pilot. 

A number is derived from whatever the wind is doing the day the airplane is flown for FAA certification. That number signifies the airplane’s maximum demonstrated capability to handle crosswinds. Pilots who test that edge are venturing into undocumented territory. If you want to land the airplane in more crosswind than demonstrated at certification, you become, in essence, a test pilot. 

So, there we stood at the hangar, discussing the plan on the ground, which is the right place to talk, as opposed to after you’ve taken off. We considered that the grass runway at Critters Lodge is enveloped by a forest of tall trees and there are campers and airplanes parked along the sides of the runway. The runway is oriented northeast-southwest. While there is no weather measurement system there, we could estimate it would be similar to what was blowing around our region at that time. The wind was coming from the southeast, which would be about a 70-degree crosswind, possibly gusting to 24 knots. We agreed to go, but we would carry extra speed on final and be ready to go around if we hit a gust at treetop level, which is where the wind’s flow would be disrupted. Our 80-knot final got us there with no problems, and we were guided to our parking spot. 

Unfortunately, Beverly and her amazing cooking team had to throw out some of the food from the weekend before. Potatoes and “fluffy” desserts that wouldn’t keep in a freezer couldn’t be saved. But the brisket was ready for hundreds of hungry pilots and friends, and it was just like old times. Speaking of which, we met some new folks, including a retired businessman from Scotland and a former Hollywood stuntman who now teaches people to fly at the Tyler County Airport near Woodville. 

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

May 11, 2021 Ingenuity

The Liberty Gazette

May 11, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Have you been following the reports from Mars? It’s almost like living in 1903 with exciting reports of “first flight”. The only difference is, now it is our (NASA’s) mission to prove flight is possible on another planet. 

Seven months after leaving Earth, Ingenuity, NASA’s four-pound helicopter drone strapped onto the Perseverance rover, landed on Mars. And what’s the big deal about a drone hovering around Mars? Plenty. This ain’t your kid’s playground drone. These drones are changing how scientists explore planets. Cutting loose from the ground-bound land rovers will enable scientists to study locations that rovers cannot reach, like over cliffs and hills and fields of large rocks that would stop a rover. 

From its first hover and rotation, proving not just flight, but controlled flight, to its fourth flight at the end of April, when Ingenuity traveled 872 feet horizontally and 16 feet vertically, for two minutes, we now know extraterrestrial flight is possible. Beyond Mars, NASA plans to launch Dragonfly, another drone helicopter with an amazing mission – a trip to Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, in 2026 or 2027. With each new accomplishment comes learning, and the knowledge gained from Mars will help the engineers who are building Dragonfly.

The Earth’s atmosphere is considerably different from that around Mars, and from Titan’s. Mars’ atmosphere is just one percent that of Earth’s. But Titan’s atmosphere is about 60% thicker than ours. Consider that in order to fly, an aircraft (whether it’s a drone or a Boeing 787) needs to generate lift. This is accomplished mechanically either by propellers or jet propulsion or some combination. Air moves around an airplane’s wings, or around a helicopter’s rotors, to produce this lift. The amount of lift you get depends on the density of the air and how fast it moves over the wings or rotors. Denser air creates more lift at a given airspeed than less dense air, so in a less dense atmosphere, like Mars, more effort is required to create lift. Therefore, Ingenuity’s rotor blades are very long compared to its mass and spin much faster than they would have to on Earth. 

Right now, Ingenuity is helping to find the best locations for Perseverance to drive around on Mars and find soil samples. They’re looking for signs of fossil life in a dried-up river delta. 

Meanwhile, on Earth, the FAA is updating aviation navigation charts, adding more little magenta rocket icons to the growing number of space launch areas as more private businesses enter the industry to exit the atmosphere. 

While subscribing to NASA’s news can keep you up to date, my favorite avenue for insight is the app Clubhouse, where I can hear the very engineers who built Ingenuity and are building Dragonfly, and who are actively working the Mars project. I tap to listen live as they talk enthusiastically about exploring Mars, the challenges involved in bringing back samples, and their ideas about Titan. It’s like sitting in the lunchroom at NASA and getting in on all the good stuff.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

May 4, 2021 Notorious Airports

The Liberty Gazette

May 4, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: I read the headline, The Ten Most Dangerous Airports in the World, and I roll my eyes. There are challenging airports, no doubt, but what in that writer’s opinion makes an airport THE MOST DANGEROUS? 

I love writing descriptive prose about what pilots see, what factors contribute to their judgement, and how they handle unusual situations. A Hawker student once said to me, “You really like to make people think outside the box,” and it’s true. The aviation life is filled with if this—then what? My job is preparing pilots to handle stressful situations. All professional pilots go through regular training to cover as many different contingencies as possible, so there should be no dangerous airports. 

Actually, the most dangerous airport could be the airport they know the best, the one with which they are the most comfortable. Complacency is one of the biggest problems facing pilots. The system, training, and the standard operating procedures pilots follow are in place to combat this. But letting down one’s guard even a little can lead down a path where more mistakes can contribute to a tragic situation. Comparatively, when landing at a so-called dangerous airport, pilots are on high alert, paying closer attention, resulting in fewer mistakes. 

During the summer flying season in Antarctica for instance, large jets and turboprops land on runways plowed out of the snow. In some instances, the airplanes land on glaciers that may or may not have monstrous crevasses a thousand feet deep underlying a blanket of snow. There are procedures for the pilots of these aircraft to mitigate most of those dangers. They are always ready for the possibility of going around and not landing. They don’t commit themselves to fate.

I’ve flown into my share of interesting places, like La Carlota Airport, a/k/a General Francisco de Miranda Air Base, right smack in the middle of Caracas, Venezuela’s east side. Because it sits in a black hole in a mountain valley with tall buildings on all sides, it was only open during daylight. Landing there required a well-thought-out plan in case we needed to abort and go around. The same was true of takeoffs. My favorite image wasn’t the awe-inspiring view out the window. It was glancing at my co-pilot’s eyes getting wider as we descended below the balconies and terraces of those buildings and hillsides on their first flight there. 

Similarly, the approach into Hong Kong’s Kai Tak airport had airliners pointing the nose at a checkerboard painted on the side of a mountain. Just before reaching it, they turned sharply to line up with the runways, nearly scraping the tops of buildings as they landed in extreme crosswinds. The operations produced a highly technical workload, but for all the difficulties, the few incidents that happened were primarily caused by mechanical problems. Eventually, a new airport was built further from the city, and Kai Tak was closed. 

I don’t regard any airport specifically as dangerous, and all airports deserve the pilot’s full focus. 

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

April 27, 2021 Jetymology

The Liberty Gazette

April 27, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Want to know where jets come from? Other than the factories. Would it surprise you to know that the word, “jet” seems to have its origins centuries before the jet age? What got me going on this was reading a 200-year-old novel that had nothing to do with airplanes, yet the word “jet” was used a few times, in its verb and adjective forms. So, I had to know. And then, of course, I had to share it with you.

Around the late 15th century, the words “jectere” and “jactare” came into use. These are Late Latin words, meaning “to throw” or “thrust.” In fact, “jectere” was abstracted from “dejectare,” “projectare,” and other similar words. “Jactare,” to toss about, to throw or cast, comes from the root *ye- meaning to throw, impel; to push forth or fling violently. At least, that’s according to Wiktionary and etymonline.com. 

The French must have been jealous, thinking about how they would try so hard to beat future Americans into the air, and so they came up with a word, “jeter,” also meaning “to throw.” About a hundred years later, this evolved into “jet,” meaning to jut out. 

Those were the verb forms, but they also used it as a noun, meaning a spout from which water (or other liquid) comes. This is where we get jet propulsion; jet engines were named as such because they use jet propulsion.

The word can also be used as an adjective. “Jet black” is a deep black and comes from lignite, a mineral used for ornamentation. That was news to me. The Anglo-French adjective was geet, while the Old French version was jaiet. The Latin is gagates, and the Greeks offered gagates lithos, which represented the location of this mineral. Credit for that knowledge goes to wyzant.com. 

And then we have words that grew out of the meanings for “jet” such as jettison (to throw out) and jetlag, a sleeping problem when one’s circadian rhythm is messed up, usually due to long trips across several time zones. The way things are going, jetlag may soon become an antiquated word. With tight controls on international travel, tomorrow’s generation may never know how jetlag feels.

Mike: Cheers to today’s etymology lesson. Basic jet engine operation is simple: it ingests air—pulls it in, squeezes it, and then fuel is mixed into the compressed air. Once the fuel-air mixture is set aflame, it expands rapidly and is pushed through the tail pipe (also known as a jet pipe) with much greater force than when it entered. That force is measured in pounds of thrust. Then, as Newton’s Third Law of Motion says, where there is an action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and away we go. 

There are different types of jet engines, such turbojets, which are often referred to as straight jets, and fan jets, where the jet engine core turns a huge fan like those on most airliners. But they all help you get out of town. 

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

April 20, 2021 Don't Mess With Texas

The Liberty Gazette

April 20, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Every day when we take our elderly German Shepherd, Hilda, out for her walk, we encounter trash along the sides of the neighborhood roads. It’s abominable, and it makes us wonder what kind of people these are who toss their trash out in front of someone else’s house. We pick up what we can, drop it in the poop bags, and add it to our trash bin, all the while muttering things about these characters who we think even live in this neighborhood. Have they no pride in their community?

One day, Mike was so angry with the amount of trash he collected on just two streets that he wished he could take the Commemorative Air Force’s B-17G Flying Fortress and scare the bejeebers out of those skunks who are littering here daily. “Just like that video,” he said. “I want to do that to them.” 

“What video?” I asked. 

“The B-17 that hunted down a screwball just like these. It was a commercial for the Texas Highway Department’s ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’ campaign.” 

“Oh, cool,” I responded and rushed over to my comfy writing chair in the living room and looked it up on YouTube. 

You might remember it. A couple of yahoos in an old red pickup rumble down a dusty West Texas highway, country music playing, and the driver tosses trash out his window. 

Queue the announcer (in West Texas drawl): “Somethin’ to think about. If you throw trash on Texas highways…” (sudden change in music to a daunting, imminent “I will get you” bass note) “Somebody up there’s gon-be watchin’.” 

A heatwave-rippled silhouette rises ominously from over the horizon and, just feet above the ground, it zeros in on the truck.

Radio: “Ghost Squadron to Ghost Squadron Leader, we’ve got one in sight. Let’s make an impression on this guy. Over.”

Announcer: “And you don’t wanna mess with the Texas Confederate Air Force.” Whoosh as the B-17 passes so low you must duck. “So don’t mess with Texas.” 

Radio: “Bombs away.” 

Yes, how wonderful that would be to invite the CAF to Liberty to hunt them down. 

The CAF brought out their North American P-51 Mustang and Grumman F4F Wildcat along with the B-17, and the director tried filming the ad with all three aircraft, but the Flying Fortress produces so much wake turbulence that the other two couldn’t stay close enough behind it, and above the wake, they were too high for the dramatic effect.

Mike: Shot more than 20 years ago, people remember this commercial among all the other “Don’t Mess With Texas” spots, including those with Texas’ famous residents Chuck Norris and George Strait. 

I wonder if the perpetrator’s perspective would change if all the trash they dumped on our streets over say 10 years was collected and then planted on their own front lawn by a low flying four-engine WWII bomber. Would the B-17’s bomb bay be big enough to hold it all? Let’s find out. 

Bombs away.

 

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

April 13, 2021 A Little Local Flying

The Liberty Gazette

April 13, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: Wheels up on a sunny Friday afternoon, and we’re over the hometown here spotting reality from a different perspective. I had wondered about those cranes along the river. For the past couple of weeks, I have noticed when driving past them at dark that all but the shortest one seem to be unlit. That’s rather unusual. The standard (law) is that anything over 199 feet must have a light on top. If the light goes out, a Notice To Airmen must be issued through the formal channels for the FAA to publish. The goal is to prevent pilots from hitting stuff. Smart goal, thank you very much. I’m not sure why only the shortest one has a light, so beware, if you’re flying low. 

After the birds’ eye view of the construction project, we flew on toward Conroe’s Lone Star Executive Airport to practice some instrument approaches. When the weather is beautiful, as it was that day, the skies tend to be more densely populated with small aircraft. I wondered why the Houston approach controller sighed after I asked for a practice approach. As we got close to Conroe and were switched over to the tower controller, we realized what that sigh meant. Lone Star Executive was abuzz with small airplanes, and the guy in the tower was spewing instructions rapid-fire! 

The wind favored landing on runway 14, so everyone was being funneled in, or out, that way. Some were flying multiple circuits in the traffic pattern, practicing landings, some were practicing approaches, like us. Others were arriving to dine at the Black Walnut, and some were taking off to who-knows-where. It was the start of the weekend, and people were getting out of Dodge. 

As the controller cleared us to land on 14, he said immediately after, “Exit One-Nine.” That’s a runway, not a taxiway. Okay, fine, runway 19 was not in use as a runway at that time, so it was being used like a taxiway. But being given this unexpected instruction while we are on short final meant we had to look quickly at how much landing distance we had before we would arrive at 19, the crossing runway, where we were expected to clear the way for the plane behind us. It meant we should plan on landing early, touch down close to the approach end of the runway and be ready to apply brakes sooner. For someone with a lot of experience, that’s a few quick adjustments. But for students and other low-time pilots, the fast-talking controller issuing orders, some of them unusual, this scenario can be intimidating. 

What probably got pilots’ attention more than anything that afternoon was his no-nonsense, gruff voice – “Listen up people! You have to be ready when I call you!” He left no question who was in charge, which is good. Later, we asked a friend who keeps their airplane there about him. “Ha! Yes, we know him. Yes, he’s very good at his job!” she said. 

How was your Friday afternoon?

 

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

April 6, 2021 If Only...

The Liberty Gazette

April 6, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Last week when we wrote about flying blind, we knew we would want to return to the British blind adventurer we mentioned, Miles Hilton-Barber. Miles lost his eyesight while in his early twenties. But he’s flown an aircraft halfway around the world from London to Australia, and that’s not all. Wait, let’s step back a bit. 

At age 18, Miles expected to follow his father, a WWII fighter pilot, into the Royal Rhodesian Air Force, but he failed the eyesight exam. Three years later, both he and his brother, Geoff, were diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa, a genetic disease that leads to total blindness. Game over? Yes, for Miles. He adopted an attitude of victimhood that lasted for the next 30 years. Then he helped Geoff build a boat, and Geoff went off and set a world record as the first blind person to cross an ocean solo. He sailed from Africa to Australia by himself. Afterward, he told Miles to stop focusing on his blindness, and start focusing on his dreams.

That was the kick in the pants Miles needed. Here he’d been waiting all those years for a miraculous healing. If only he could see again, then he could… but there was Geoff. He wasn’t waiting. He was living, while Miles had been telling himself, “you’re not meant to do that.”

He realized that we cannot always control things that happen to us, but we can control how we respond. He didn’t know how it would happen, but he would pursue his lifelong dream to be a pilot. It took years of perseverance, but he never gave up, and one day he took off from London and touched down in Sydney after 55 days and 13,000 miles in a microlight aircraft. Speech output technology and a co-pilot helped him do it, and most important to Miles, he raised money to eradicate preventable blindness in developing countries. 

Miles has set other world records and taken part in extreme events across all seven continents in mountaineering, desert and polar ultra-marathons, power-boat racing, scuba-diving, motor-racing, aerobatic and supersonic flying. He completed the Marathon Des Sables, 151 miles across the Saharan desert in the “toughest footrace on Earth.” He’s climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and holds the world record as the first blind person to man-haul a sled nearly 250 miles across Antarctica. 

But here’s the thing: If you’re Miles Hilton-Barber, you believe that God can use you to help others; that it’s not about you, it’s about relationships. He and his wife of several decades have children and grandchildren who are the light of their lives. 

He also says don’t let your achievements make you arrogant and proud. Rather, know that by God’s grace, if you can do these things, it must mean that other people can. “It’s like walking through deep snow,” he says, “you need a strong person up front, breaking through and making a path for others to follow.” That’s what his flight to Sydney did for preventable blindness.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

March 30, 2021 Flying Blind

The Liberty Gazette

March 30, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

The phrase, “flying blind” may make you think of the titles of various forms of entertainment — a couple of novels, at least two films, a short-lived 90s sitcom, and an album by Irish vocalist Niamh Kavanagh. None, however come close to the reason the phrase exists, which is to describe flying in conditions so visually obscured that one must rely on the aircraft’s instruments in the panel to know where to go and how to handle the airplane. This begs the question, could a blind person fly an airplane? 

Blindness in one eye does not necessarily prevent the acquisition of a pilot certificate. There are airline pilots who have been able to demonstrate to the FAA that they can fly with the visual input from one eye. However, there really are fully blind pilots. While they cannot be given a pilot certificate to fly on their own, they can and do show the world how to overcome barriers. 

For example, British blind adventurer Miles Hilton-Barber flew a microlite aircraft halfway around the world from London to Australia using audio computer software.

A group of air cadets, the Flying Aces, led by the Air Training Corps of Scotland, are encouraged to consider that if they can fly an airplane, they can do anything. These teens with various disabilities are given a boost of confidence which leads them to think more broadly about their future. 

For those who prefer the experience on the ground, Canadian company Pacific Feelings Media created “It’s Your Plane,” which was light years beyond Microsoft Flight Simulator. In Blind Pilot Mode, this virtual co-pilot took voiced instructions and applied them to simulator flying, from pre-flight to shut down. 

And then there’s Jim Platzer, former president of a Fortune 500 company, forced into early retirement due to retinitis pigmentosa. Jim was a pilot before he went blind. His ambition to get back in the left seat (with dual controls and a flight instructor next to him) inspired Jason DeCamillis to take to the skies. Jason wanted to learn to fly a plane ever since he was a child, but he too has retinitis pigmentosa. As a special education teacher and advocate for students with disabilities, when he heard about Jim flying around, he quickly realized how many more people he could encourage in a new way. 

Jason’s flight instructor, Dr. Alex Arts, teaches people to fly when he’s not performing ear surgery. Ironically, Alex was rejected by the Navy for a pilot position because he did not have 20/20 uncorrected vision. Years later, he was helping Jason learn to fly an airplane. 

He says, “I can see people asking, why would you spend all this money when the endpoint is limited? But the endpoint is limited no matter what you do. So, we’ve gone from flying airplanes to the most fundamental part of being a human being.”

Jason agrees. “It’s not about overcoming disability; it’s about living my life. I want to share what is possible when we work together across ability.”

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

March 23, 2021 Here's Learing at You

The Liberty Gazette

March 23, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: Last month, Bombardier, the builder of the Learjet, announced that it would cease production of that iconic aircraft. Though Lears will fly for many years to come, it is difficult to accept the end is on the horizon. The Learjet 35A is the model I have the most experience in. Since 1991, I have logged nearly 7,500 hours in Lears. There are 8,760 hours in a year, meaning about ten and a half months of my life were spent strapped to a hotrod. 

Learjet at La Carlota

The Learjet was the vision of Bill Lear, the inventor of the eight-track tape player. He was probably a genius, but he was also eccentric. I once landed in Salt Lake City unable to operate my landing lights. 

The mechanic found some funny looking crumbling electrical wiring that did not look like any of the electrical schematics. Yet, it looked like an original installation, so he contacted the factory folks. The engineers in Wichita didn’t know anything about what they assumed was a modification. 

They went looking for people who worked on the production line when our plane was built and found a guy who had been retired for more than ten years who remembered what happened. He told how Bill Lear came out to the production line one day and wanted to try out something new. I was told this was a common occurrence, Bill making ad-hoc modifications during production, which is what led to the affectionate saying, “the Learjet is the world’s most expensive homebuilt airplane.”

Learjet at General Fransico Miranda AB
Caracus Venezuela SVFM

 The first Learjet, model 23, took flight in 1963. Then came the 24, 25, 28 and 29 models, all of which comprised the “20-series”, followed by the “30-series” and the “50-series”. A pilot needed one type rating, LR-JET, on their certificate to be captain on any airplane in these series. Then, the Learjet 60 and later the 40-series were introduced, each requiring their own type rating. The Learjet 45 looks like its predecessors, but the first time I flew one, it flew more like a truck than a Ferrari, like the previous models. However, it is very efficient, and the pilots who fly it regularly, love it. 

I hold two of the three Learjet type ratings, the LR-JET and LR-60. I’ve flown the Lear at over 500 mph, topped 49,000 feet on a test flight, and across the Atlantic. 

Mike Ely, Captain, Learjet.
Winter 1994, Denver Stapleton

I once flew a Lear non-stop coast to coast in three and a half hours. Before take-off, the other pilot and I waited for an hour as technicians in San Diego carefully loaded a rocket guidance system on our Lear. 

They hooked up sensors to detect any possible damage caused by turbulence. A brisk tailwind kicked us all the way to Titusville, Florida where another group was waiting to offload our precious passenger. We were surprised because, unlike the careful loading, it took them just five minutes to rip it out.

The Learjet holds a special place in my logbooks, just like other pilots who’ve been fortunate to fly them.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

March 16, 2021 Tails of Irony

The Liberty Gazette

March 16, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: I have plenty more snow-blown tales to tell, but they can wait until next year. Our two weeks of winter seems to be over. Meanwhile, as we hope for a return to normal in airline travel, let’s discuss some do’s and don’ts. In short, do consider whether all your carry-ons are necessary and appropriate, and don’t abuse privileges or take advantage of animals. I’ll explain.

When Mikhail Galin bought a ticket for a flight on Russian airliner Aeroflot, he assumed his cat, Viktor, could ride along on his lap. The pair had a layover in Moscow on their way from Latvia to far eastern Vladivostok where the airline denied cabin seating to Viktor because the cat was too fat. He weighed 22 pounds, and the limit is 17 pounds. But Mikhail was determined to find a way, and with some quick thinking, he concocted a plan. He found a “double,” but one that had been eating fewer snacks than Viktor had. Her name was Phoebe, and she weighed only 15 pounds. Her owners brought her to the airport and loaned her to Mikhail to take to the counter and claim she was Viktor. Once they completed check-in, Phoebe and her people left, and Mikhail and Viktor boarded the plane. Too late to get in trouble, he thought.

They would have pulled it off had Mikhail not bragged on social media. Now Aeroflot was also determined to find a way. The punishment was revocation of Mikhail’s 400,000 air miles. That makes it one expensive seat for the cat. That’s about $4,500 worth of miles, or 333,330.75 Russian rubles. A cat sitter would have been cheaper.

Linda: But when it’s the pet that’s supposed to babysit the owner, an abuse of the privilege can also be costly. 

Without arguing the legitimacy of emotional support animals, many which are lifesavers for people suffering disorders such as combat-induced PTSD, there are times when our fellow two-leggers fail us, and them. A flight from London to Austin was one such time. A planeload of people aboard a Norwegian Airlines airplane were delayed from departing for an hour and a half thanks to a couple of passengers with their “emotional support” French Bulldogs dressed in pink tutus. Ironically, as the dogs boarded, they became distressed. It was clear to the captain, who has the final say on the flight, that this was going to be a problem, so the tutus trotted right back off the plane, their humans with them, under captain’s orders. 

A line has to be drawn somewhere. After all, do you want to share a few intimate hours with a horse or a peacock, trapped together in a shiny metal tube rocketing through the atmosphere? 

On the other hand, Bob Jamison once made an effort to give emotional support to a nine-foot python, at the emotional expense of pilot David Rogers, to return it to its home in Belize, conveniently when Bob and friends planned a fishing trip down there. 

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com