First Look: People are talking

They gather at airport diners. Organizers of local fly-ins make a space for their meetups. Got a flat tire? Weathered in? Chances are, someone—often more than one someone—will be happy to help. They post photos of obscure airports and scenic vistas, smiling kids perched on airplane tires, brilliant sunsets. They cook tasty food on grills at airports and grass strips. They soak in all that aviation offers and share the love.

Soon, they will be setting up chairs to watch each other land and judge those landings, all in good fun.

“What we do is we have fun,” Van Baren said, explaining Flights Above Beauty Landings, which will be introduced this year at events alongside spot landing contests and flour drops. “Flights Above is all about having fun.”

The creation of an airplane landing beauty pageant with prizes and food and judges who hold score cards over their heads is, in essence, a new implementation of the same core concept that created the online groups: Take the things that pilots do anyway and make them more fun by sharing the experience with an appreciative audience. Who among us, Van Baren wondered, has not sat and watched another pilot land and rendered a silent verdict on the airmanship and/or aesthetics of said landing?

The contest concept features another of the threads that run through each Flights Above group, gathering, and conversation: “Everybody can participate.”

That means the contest is just as open to the student pilot as the veteran airline captain. All are welcome.

The original group, Flights Above the Pacific Northwest (FATPNW, pronounced “fat pee, and double-u” with impish glee) began replicating in 2017, with volunteers stepping up in nine regions around the country to serve as group administrators. Van Baren takes pains to shower them with credit and resists any accusation he is a leader of a social aviation movement, although he has devoted countless hours to adding new layers to the concept. Premium memberships launched in 2016 cost $99; with that comes access to discounts and deals from nearly 100 vendors on products and services that can put a noticeable dent in the cost of flying. Participating vendors, in turn, get new customers they might otherwise have missed, and the organization covers the cost of organizing events and printing stickers and other swag with the group’s logo—a logo that has featured prominently in many a picture posted on social media, including one memorable logo shot taken from the cockpit of an inverted F/A–18 Hornet.

There has been enough left over to pay for scholarships, at first being offered to FATPNW members. These relatively modest awards cover a few lessons, or books, or a knowledge test, or ground school, although that could easily grow. Van Baren hopes to enlarge what he terms a “perfect circle of happiness” that includes members, vendors, and organizers. Applications are being accepted in the form of selfie videos in which the applicant explains what they can contribute to the aviation community, how they’ve benefitted from being a FATPNW member, and why they’re a good candidate.

“My goal and my dream is to be able to offer this nationwide down the road,” said Van Baren, who had no idea it would come to this when he started.

Email [email protected]

Web: www.flightsabove.org