Pilots: Trip around the sun

How do you go from all-out to all-in in 12 months? It started when Thompson’s classic car club held a joint car show/fly-in with an Experimental Aircraft Association chapter in November 2016. Hanging out at the event, Thompson told one of his buddies how he had always loved the Ercoupe—then looked up to see one in the pattern. “The guy landed and I went over to talk to him. He said, ‘Well, the keys are in it. Take it up!’” recalled Thompson, who had about 100 hours in his logbook before he quit flying in 1980. “Of course I didn’t, but I started researching Ercoupes.”

Thompson soon found himself spending more and more time looking at airplanes and thinking about flying. He joined the Houston Area Aviators’ Facebook page and rode along with local pilots when they had an empty seat. He took AOPA’s Rusty Pilots seminar, then scheduled a flight review.

“The flying came back to me quickly,” said the 65-year-old Thompson. “By going on lunch runs with my Houston pilot friends, I got in flying time and knocked the rust off, which helped me get my flight review done in an hour.”

Best of all, he found a 1945 Ercoupe 415–C for sale in Oklahoma. He closed the deal in May 2017 and proudly parked his dream airplane at Grawunder Field (06R) in Bellville, Texas, about 10 minutes from his house. Since resuming flying in 2017, Thompson has added 60 hours to his logbook—53 of those in his Ercoupe.

But Thompson soon discovered his fairy-tale story had a villain. “We have a hostile city council that wants to close our local airport,” he said. “The airport is privately owned and the city leases it. Some of the people on the council think flying is just a rich guy’s hobby; they don’t see any benefit to paying for the airport and want to close it down.”

When he heard what was happening, Thompson sprang into action. He obtained economic impact studies from AOPA showing that for a town the size of Bellville, the airport could bring in $200,000 to $300,000 worth of business. Leveraging that information, Thompson and another pilot pushed the city council to place a courtesy car at the airport so pilots could get into town to spend money at local businesses.

“We put in a motion-triggered game camera at the airport to record the planes coming in” and show the city council there’s traffic, Thompson said. “I also came up with a user form. When pilots come in, they fill out the form and text a picture of it to me or my partner in this effort. We text back the combination to the lockbox containing the keys to the car. This helps us track who has the car, so we can show the council usage information.”

Thompson also makes a point to introduce pilots to the owners of local restaurants so they know airport users are giving them business. As a result of his efforts, several restaurant owners have spoken out to the city council in favor of keeping the airport open.

“This is my mission: encouraging people to fly in,” said Thompson, adding that the final vote on whether to extend the airport lease will take place this summer. Until then, Thompson will keep fighting, flying—and urging pilots to bring business to Bellville so his airport’s story, like his own, has a happy ending.