Page 6 - Volume 15 Number 8

The Grand is Cool
I wanted to write to thank you for the story by Kevin Dingman that appeared in the June 2011 issue of Twin & Turbine. Not being a pilot myself, but a passenger in many planes that have landed on Mackinac Island, I found the island airport information to be the most intriguing.
I also appreciate the mention of Grand Hotel. One point of clarification should be that Grand Hotel is entirely air-conditioned. In 2007, we added air conditioning to the remaining guest rooms in the hotel. About half of the rooms were air-conditioned prior to this time and one of our staff came up with a clever idea of how to do it in an environmentally friendly way using cold water in specially designed units, making all of the rooms air-conditioned.
Thank you again for the story on Mackinac Island. I particularly liked the photo of the bag of fudge hanging from the propeller.
Kenneth Hayward
Vice President
Grand Hotel
Mackinac Island, Mich.
Chock It Up to Experience
I read your op-ed (May 2011 issue regarding an anonymous letter disparaging women pilots) with particular interest.
Like you, I use my planes like the family car. I have flown my son all over the country to play baseball and now back and forth to college. We have routinely traversed half the country in a few hours, beat the airline families door to door and avoided all the fun they have dealing with airline security.
I love G/A and the freedom and accessibility it provides and I love to write about it. That letter however, got under my skin. The perception of class warfare in G/A hadn’t occurred to me. Of course, no one, other than yourself and possibly your spouse knows the price you pay just to be in G/A, paying for the plane is just a part of that. Training, insurance, hangar and maintenance, none of it is cheap. We all walk the line between affordable and safe and hopefully, buy an aircraft that both fits the mission and is affordable (to the owner). Turbine aircraft are relatively inexpensive right now and I see a lot piston guys moving up to take advantage of the low entry price of the twin and turbine world. But they don’t know what they don’t know, and they need all the guidance they can get.
As a flight instructor, I can tell you women make better pilots then men and in my experience usually receive their ratings in fewer instructional hours received then men. As a business owner, my experience is that women make better employees then men and if I had my way, all my pilots would be women. (I run two air charter companies a maintenance company and a turbine flight training company).
Don’t let some crazy with an axe to grind change your paradigm. Keep doing what you love to do, keep publishing your magazine and when you get a letter or an e-mail like that, chock it up to experience. My ex-partner used to say, experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. Sounds like experience to me.
AirMail Letters to the Editor
Michael Leighton
4 • TWIN & TURBINE
AUGUST 2011