Opinions

The noon whistle didn’t blow the other day. Neither did the 7, the 1, or the 6.

At Delta Air Lines where I was a pilot for many years, it is customary for the flight crew to stand at the door and greet passengers as they board or exit the plane. I made every attempt to do this, keeping in mind a quote from Henry Ford: “It is not the employer who pays wages – he only handles the money. It is the product that pays the wages.” In the airline industry the passenger experience is the product!

There I sat, momentarily free from the chaotic world of sports, enjoying what could only be described as a brief and fleeting period of calm. But as anyone who knows me can attest, I don’t do “calm” for long. The past couple of weeks have been filled with an entirely different kind of madness—one that involves burgers, baseball, wrestling, and keeping an eye on local legends making noise at state basketball.

While I was at Delta Air Lines, every nine months every pilot would return to Atlanta for two days of intense simulator training. For six hours each day in a full-motion simulator with 180-degree 3D visuals, every airport we could fly into, any conceivable mishap, emergency or scenario a pilot might encounter could be created by the trainer. During those grueling hours in the sim, trainers could recreate horrible weather, turbulence, engine stalls, fire, rapid decompression, hijackings, you name it! Those exercises were something each of us knew we needed in case we ever faced one of those actual events in the air. Most of our flying was routine but we needed to be ready for the inevitable. Our performance in the sim was graded and the union couldn’t protect you if you did poorly. Getting a passing grade and keeping your job was based on performance.

There was a time when I was just a kid with a notepad and a camera, trying to capture the pulse of a town, scribbling down whatever I could before the final buzzer sounded or my deadline hit me like a linebacker with something to prove.

This year I have introduced in the Legislature LB 550, which empowers parents by giving them a stronger voice in their children’s education while equipping schools with additional resources to support student success. The bill provides for Released Time Religious Instruction (RTRI), wherein each school district would adopt a policy for excusing students to attend a released time religious course for one class period per week. RTRI would cost the school nothing and all study would be off school grounds. All transportation would be provided by the parents or sponsoring entity. Written parental permission would be required for a student to attend.