AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2013 - 4

PRESIDENT’S POSITION

Welcome to our world

CRAIG L. FULLER
AOPA President and CEO

Sharing the experience of flight
MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE we’ve been in the winter months—
when we seem to spend less time flying and more time
talking about it—but there is a good deal of discussion
around AOPA about just how many ways there are to
share the flying experience.
While there is no substitute for “slipping the surly
bonds of Earth,” in today’s real and virtual worlds there
are many other ways to share that which we so enjoy,
getting aloft in a small aircraft. For me, a seaplane flight
in Oregon when I was 14 showed me I wanted to see
more from this unique perspective. A good many years
and more than 3,000 hours in the logbook later, it’s evident that my first flight experience really did change
my life. Whenever something actually causes
a fundamental change in anyone’s life, it’s
ON THE
WEB
worth some careful study.
Like many of you, I always enjoy taking
JOIN OUR SOCIAL NETWORKS
people flying. Whether it’s their first time in
Check us out online:
a GA airplane or their first time in a particuwww.facebook.com/aopapilots
lar type of GA aircraft, I really like watching
www.aopa.org/aopanow
www.aopa.org/ePilot
the wonderment and the pure joy of somewww.aopa.org
one experiencing something for the first time.
blog.aopa.org
As I’ve traveled around these past few
twitter.com/AOPA
years, I’ve come to realize that sharing the
experience of flight is beneficial to building a stronger
GA community. At AOPA, we have tried several new
approaches to inviting more people into the world of
general aviation.
In addition to our printed publications, AOPA Pilot
and Flight Training magazines, we offer digital editions
of our magazines, some fascinating eBooks available
online (www.aopa.org/ebooks), and a range of electronic newsletters.
AOPA members are invited to get more deeply
engaged in general aviation by staying in touch with
the news through the weekly ePilot newsletter. It shares
pretty much all of the important stuff that goes on each
week at AOPA and throughout the GA community
(www.aopa.org/members/files/pilot/epilot).
We also want to open the doors to people who are
interested in GA, even though they may not be pilots
or AOPA members. For them, we offer Aviation eBrief,
CRAIG FULLER
an electronic publication that shares stories about the
is an avid pilot
who owns an
general aviation experience with more than 200,000
Aviat Husky based
readers five days a week. Of course, it’s great for pilots
at the Frederick,
and AOPA members, too. Get a free subscription for you
Maryland, airport
(FDK).
or a friend online (www.aopa.org/ebrief ).

4 | AOPA PILOT March 2013

And, we don’t stop with print and electronic offerings. We also have our own video channel, AOPA Live
This Week. Each week, Tom Haines, the leader of all
AOPA’s media groups, anchors a video program that
treats you to the news of the week and exciting flying experiences of all kinds. For more information, go
online (www.aopa.org/aopalive).
We always want to keep our most important audience, our members, informed. But it’s also worthwhile
to share news of GA outside our own small community—
as we were reminded when we first posted our story
about Robin Fleming, a pilot who was forced by local
law enforcement to land his sailplane for a perceived
airspace violation, despite the fact that they had no jurisdiction in the matter and the FAA said no FARs were
violated (“Breach of Peace,” February 2013 AOPA Pilot).
If you found it as interesting as it was hard to believe,
I must tell you that everyone in Washington, D.C., who
pays attention to aviation was aware of the pilot forced
to land in South Carolina. Even Congressional leaders
were telling us about this flying experience!
While this kind of news story about the unusual
and unacceptable reaches a large audience, I am just as
proud to share the joys of the everyday flying our team at
AOPA engages in week after week. Just a few days ago,
I marveled at how hundreds of people had seen, liked,
and commented on a few pictures I posted about a cold,
snowy flight in the AOPA Caravan, followed days later
by a flight for pure fun in my Husky with two colleagues
in an RV–12. The point is that sharing and following flying experiences is a great way to get pilots and aviation
enthusiasts alike engaged with general aviation. And
with more media outlets than ever, we are sharing more
flight experiences all the time.
But we’re not the only people with stories to tell.
Share your own flying experiences with friends, family, and followers. Invite others to be part of your flying
adventures—it’s a simple but effective way to strengthen
and expand our GA community.
We will keep looking for new ways to share flying experiences, and we’ve got some great ideas in the
works for pilots and enthusiasts alike.
In the meantime, as the weather improves, let’s all
enjoy our freedom to fly by getting out and creating new
flying experiences to share far and wide.
AOPA
EMAIL craig@aopa.org

http://www.aopa.org/aopalive http://www.aopa.org http://www.facebook.com/aopapilots http://www.aopa.org/aopanow http://www.aopa.org/ePilot http://www.aopa.org http://blog.aopa.org http://www.twitter.com/AOPA http://www.aopa.org/ebooks http://www.aopa.org/members/files/pilot/epilot http://www.aopa.org/ebrief

AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2013