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Boeing advert: Paul Poberezny Radio Essay
Posted by bdk on Tue Jul 22, 2003 02:48:58 PM
In reply top null posted by null on null
Audio Transcript
Paul Poberezny
Founder, the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA)
Announcer: Boeing presents another in a series of essays from contemporary opinion leaders. Today, founder of the Experimental Aircraft Association and recipient of the Wright Brothers Award, Paul Poberezny.
Mr. Poberezny: In 1993, we were looking ahead to the Centennial of Flight, trying to find the right way for the Experimental Aircraft Association to honor the event. And when this idea came up, we all felt it was right.
We called the idea Young Eagles. Over a ten-year period, leading up to the Centennial of Flight, the goal was to have one million kids between the ages of eight and seventeen experience their first flight. Mentored by volunteer pilots, these kids would go through Ground School 101 along with a mini-cockpit laboratory. And then, volunteer pilots would take them up for their personalized, one-on-one introductory flight.
Over the past ten years, more than 30,000 volunteer pilots have taken more than 900,000 Young Eagles on their inaugural flights. The one millionth will fly on December 17th. They have flown in Ford Tri-Motors, DC-3s, helicopters, and gliders and jets with the most popular ride being the Cessna 172.
And if the aircraft are diverse, the kids flying proudly in the co-pilot?s seat are even more diverse. We have flown kids from the inner city and kids from the suburbs. We have flown kids who, moved by the experience, have gone on to become pilots. And we have flown the children of Chernobyl, many of whom won?t see their twentieth birthday.
While this experience doesn?t much resemble the Wright Brothers? experience at Kitty Hawk one hundred years ago, it produces results that are, I believe, very much the same. It is, after all, about the wonder of flight.
Announcer: Boeing. Forever New Frontiers.