The world is becoming ever more tightly connected each day. The reverberations between Wall Street and my version of Main Street—the general aviation world—are becoming more intense. Just in the last 24 hours, I’ve come across a couple of surprises which I’ll share in a moment. First, if you haven’t already downloaded my Free “Learn to Fly” eBook, please do it now and send it to any friends who you think might want to learn. Let's all do our part to keep General Aviation healthy.
Electronic communication is also becoming pervasive and I’d like to invite you to sign up and join me in several ways. Want to be the first to know when my new…
book is released? Then sign up via one of these methods. You might also find out when I happen to be stopping by in your town for a few hours so we can get together and talk for a few minutes. Or, maybe you want to share with me your latest discovery of some undocumented feature in the Garmin G1000. Whatever, the reason, let’s get connected!
There are lots of ways to connect. If you’re reading this on my sjflight.com/maxtrescott/ blog, then just enter your email address in the upper left of the screen and you’ll get an email whenever the blog is updated (about 3 or 4 times a month).
Or, do you Twitter? If you go to www.twitter.com, you can sign-up to get short “tweets”—very short text messages—from me. For example, I originally planned to be in Salt Lake City today, but had to cancel. I probably would have sent out a tweet to let people know that I was in town in case they wanted to meet up. I have lots of customers there and would love to have met more of them. I do a lot of traveling around the country, and twitter is a good way to update people on where I am. If you go on twitter, just look for my very creative user name—Max Trescott—and sign up to receive my tweets.
Facebook is also another great way to get connected. If you’re one of the millions of people on Facebook, then you know what a great method it is for catching up with family and friends. In the “Pages” section, you can also follow your favorite organizations, bands and writers—which is where you’ll find my new page. Click here to find me on Facebook and then click on “Become a Fan” in the upper right. Or, if you’re not yet on Facebook, go to Facebook.com to create a profile and start connecting with your friends.
The Tightly Connected World
Which brings me to the tightly connected world. It’s funny how one thing leads to another. On January 15, I was interviewed in a local TV studio about the “Miracle on the Hudson” landing by USAir 1549. After posting that video on my blog, Aero-News Network called me up 2 weeks ago to record a podcast about working with the media. Somewhere during that interview I mentioned that companies need to stand up and start defending their usage of aviation as a business tool. Today, I see that Cessna is stepping up by launching a campaign to do just that—get businesses to defend their usage of airplanes. Great leadership from a great company. By the way, I learned the story—through my Facebook friends.
But look at the other reverberations going on. A couple of days ago I read that Textron, the parent company of Cessna, is parting ways with two of their financial Vice Presidents. I didn’t think about it much at the time. After all, Textron is a large conglomerate, so it didn’t occur to me that it might affect Cessna. Then today I read that Textron needs to raise $1 billion and might sell Cessna or Bell helicopter!
One side of the company—the financial geniuses—lose a lot of money. Yet another side of the company may end up paying for their misdeeds. As I’ve told my kids dozens of times, Life isn’t Fair. I can only hope that Textron finds another path through their financial problems without having to sell one of these fine companies.