as the prop turns

It sure beats me why Wings was the only well-known, successful sitcom to take place at an airport. This blogger is frankly puzzled by the fact. There's enough drama (and comedy) at small airports to sustain at least five sitcoms on daytime TV, no problem. It'd be a piece of cake. I can envision at least three seasons' worth off the top of my head as I sit here in the briefing room. Yes, even this innocuous airport in Apple Valley has all kinds of stuff going on in the background which would escape the average citizen's notice, but would be commanding fodder for a drama or afternoon soap.

And I ain't lyin'.

My pilots and I have openly acknowledged that an airport drama set at KAPV would likely succeed. As the Prop Turns was our chosen title.

I'll introduce the cast of characters first, and then the premise. I'd like you to meet some of the flawed and florid characters we have hanging around here. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

(Disclaimer: As the Prop Turns is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between the characters and any real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and unintentional.)

TOM: The airport café's owner and head cook. Tall, bald, and congenial, Tom is somewhat lopsided, the result of a nasty motorcycle accident in his youth. A good chunk of his stomach muscle was grafted onto his ankle to replace the flesh gouged away. He walks with a permanent limp, and constantly slips on the grease on the café's kitchen floor—despite the Crocs he wears to prevent this from happening. A full-length fall upon the floor is not uncommon. Tom invariably burns his hands, cuts his skin or breaks his bones when this happens. He chipped his hip a few weeks ago, and most recently broke his femur on his way to the bathroom. He's on crutches now, and has hired extra help to mind the store. The economy being where it is (in the U-bend of the national toilet's drainpipe), business isn't so good, either. Combine low income with broken bones and you get Tom, stumping about behind the counter, chunnering ceaselessly to himself. He expresses political opinions openly; checks gas prices (and women's undergarments) with a pair of scuffed binoculars; and claims that Cream's original lineup consisted of Eric Clapton, Robert Plant, Jim Morrison and George Harrison. Tom's definitely one of the more colorful characters here at the airport.

VINCENT: The airport manager, employed by the county. A large, imposing man with a white mustache and a goatee down to his chest. His dress is always impeccably professional, button-down shirts and slacks, as befitting an airport manager...and a hog rider who needs to conceal the sleeve tattoos on both arms. He takes the details of his job seriously, and ministers minor duties with his own brand of zeal. A few years back it was discovered that some unscrupulous character was coming into the pilot's briefing room in the dead of night and downloading pornography. Upon receiving this intelligence, Vince laid in wait, grasped the man by his collar, and threw him bodily from the airport building. The brazen pervert hasn't been heard from since.
You will notice, however, that I used the words "details" and "minor" in referring to the way Vincent does his job. A shadow hangs over the manager's office. All sorts of nasty rumors are swirling around around Vince. From what I hear, he's a snarky, secretive, dishonest martinet who runs shady backroom deals out of his office. He won't allow new businesses onto airport property, because he's worried they might expose his illegal dealings.
I'm not sure how much truth there is to the secrecy and dishonesty, but I do find Vince to be a snarky martinet. He's always the first to jump down the throat of anyone he perceives breaking rules or doing something wrong.
Okay, so I might've been driving a little fast around the airport. It wasn't a big deal. I never came close to hitting anything. Nevertheless Vincent noticed, and had one of his maintenance men keep an eye on me, and report to him if I did it again. Sure enough, I proved a repeat offender. Vincent stopped me on my way to Tom's restaurant. He scolded me and told me to slow down. I agreed, wondering why he had chosen to pick on me and not the half-dozen other pilots who rip around the airport like stock car drivers. When someone chopped up a parked car with a propeller two weeks ago, Vince was called from home to assess the damage. The first thing he did was admonish the flight school's chief mechanic, Lenny, to move his car away from the wreckage. Lenny was well outside the line of cones surrounding the jumble. There was no need to move. Evidently Vince, and his authoritative ego, thought otherwise.

LAURA: Vince's pretty secretary. She looks way, way too good to be 30 years old and a single mother of two. This long, tall and leggy brunette has been turning heads at the airport for several years. All the old men at the airport feel that there must be some trick behind her comeliness, and spend a good portion of their time looking behind her, just to be sure. (It doesn't help that her wardrobe consists mostly of knee-length halter sundresses.)
Laura is nice: friendly, outgoing, accommodating, and conversational. But she's a wolf in sheep's clothing. She realizes that her position at Apple Valley depends on her superior's good will, and as such she is firmly "on his side." She's Vince's informant, his confidante, his unquestioning toady. Anything a pilot says to her can and will get back to the airport manager. Laura may give you a friendly, smiling, trustworthy look, but woe betide you if you reveal any sensitive information to her. Vince will be breathing down your neck in short order. Laura is not your friend if you are late on your hangar rental payments, haven't stumped up for transient parking fees, or get caught washing your airplane on airport grounds. She'll sell you up the river without a second thought. A femme fatale indeed.

HERB: An instructor and part-owner of Apple Valley's second flight school. (Why are there two flight schools here, you ask? I'll explain in a moment. It's quite the piece of drama.)
Herb is a marvelous man. He's the most amiable, peaceful, tolerant and equable human being I've ever met. He's a flight student's dream: he won't harp on, howl at or harangue a pupil. Flying with him is more like flying with your favorite uncle or a friendly neighbor. He merely points out what you could be doing better, and congratulates you on what you did right.
But...he's not that good at flying. His total number of solo hours could be counted on fingers and toes. Most of his flight-time was spent instructing, and instructors don't fly unless their students do something drastically wrong. But more than that, Herb just doesn't know that much. Flight instruction is like any other kind of education, and among its teachers, there are good eggs and bad eggs. The good ones are constantly seeking to improve their skills, adjust their lessons to fit new examples, call on situations they've experienced or read about, possess a bazillion flight hours, aren't just gunning for a job with the major airlines, and know all there is to know about the airplane, the airframe, the engine, and what's going through the student's mind (and fingers).
The bad ones...well, they're just not up to code. Maybe their methods are out of date. Maybe their benchmarks and rules-of-thumb are airport-specific, or apply only to certain situations. Maybe they don't communicate very well, or don't place proper emphasis on the most important subjects. Maybe they're not good at teaching students useful shortcuts or mnemonic devices. Or maybe they're just not that good at teaching, or don't know what the heck they're talking about. (Unfortunately, there are a lot of flight instructors out there like that.)
There's been a few things Herb has taught me that JM-1, my current instructor, has had to fix. I like Herb a lot and thank him for getting me through the bulk of my private pilot training, but he's not the best, and that's the honest truth.
Herb was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a terrible blow to him as a human being, a business owner, and a pilot. His flying will have to be severely restricted from now on. He can barely get from the truck to the flight school office some mornings, and that's a level walk of barely 30 yards. I feel truly sorry for the man and respect his valiant struggle against the disease. He is truly a good man, but like any man, he has his flaws. 

BARBARA: Herb's sensible, straightforward wife. Her body is a twisted parody of humanity, contorted into an awkward, shambling wreck by rheumatoid arthritis. Each of her ten fingers points in a different direction. Watching her take someone's debit card and swipe it through the reader is almost physically painful. She keeps a stiff upper lip, however, despite the hardships of running a flight school in this day and age. She's just as nice and supportive as Herb is, if not more: her encouraging words helped me get back on an even keel before and after my private pilot checkride. 

OLD JOE: The bent, wrinkled, smiling ass-kicker-turned-airport-bum. Serving in the Air Force for over 20 years, a veteran of two wars (Korea and Vietnam), Joe was and still is an accomplished pilot who flew everything from the F-86 to the F-111 and wound up with an armload of amazing stories to tell. Ask him about dodging SAMs over Vietnam, dogfights with MiGs, the burst of flak that blew out his windscreen and nearly blinded him, night raids over enemy territory, racing Phantom pilots to the ground, dust storms in Nevada that cut visibility to a quarter-mile. Those and other hair-raising tales, too numerous to mention, are just the beginning. Now, it seems, Joe's settled down to a quiet life of sweatpants, tennis shoes and sugared coffee. (I've never seen him without his blue Air Force baseball cap, either.) You can find him at the airport any day of the week, his gnarled hands in his pockets, his voice hoarse from years of shouting over jet engines. He tends the flight school when Herb and Barbara aren't around, and enjoys a good chat with anyone who happens by.

LENNY: The mechanic-in-residence at Herb and Barbara's flight school. Billing himself as a prop balancer, Lenny's abilities run the gamut from tightening bolts to full-on engine replacement. I don't have much on him. He has a crop of white hair, is about 5'6", drives a silver SUV, and is generally regarded as an idiot and a thief, even among his fellow mechanics. I can't say. I've never had direct proof, only secondhand accounts. And speaking of secondhand accounts...

SONJA: I've mentioned her before. The chain-smoking Dutch matron of the original flight school at Apple Valley, M______ Aviation. Short and plump, with a lined face, auburn hair and twinkling eyes, Sonja's accents are often heard on the traffic advisory frequency. (She pronounces "r" like "w.") Sonja is outgoing and helpful, but the way the pilots tell it, she's the next thing to a highway robber. Renting a hangar from her is like showing up to an IRS audit without last year's tax forms: she'll rake you over the coals if you're behind on your payments. And good luck trying to rent-to-own an aircraft from her. Sonja, the story goes, has a nasty habit of adding miscellaneous and superfluous charges onto any bill she processes. Repair bills always have an extra quart of oil tacked on for no apparent reason. Herb and Barbara once tried to lease an airplane from her, but couldn't make any headway at all toward ownership thanks to the superlative charges they paid each month. They finally gave up the ghost, told Sonja to stick it, and went and founded their own flight school down at the other end of the runway. (That's how there came to be two flight schools at this airport.) Neither Herb nor Barbara—nor hardly anyone who's had their plane serviced at her garage—has anything complimentary to say about Sonja.

PETE: The venerable, soft-spoken, eternally grease-stained master mechanic at M______ Aviation. You know him, you love him. What you don't know is that he and Sonja used to be romantically involved. When they split, M______ Aviation fell on hard times. For all Sonja's faults, she was extremely good at keeping the books. So Pete fired his inept secretary and hired Sonja back on, and the two cigarette smokers have run a tight ship ever since. Pete is a capable man and will loan out tools and equipment for free, but his reputation around the airport has been soiled by the price he charges for inspections (and his complicity with Sonja's money-grubbing).

I guess those are the major players. What a motley crew, eh? Quite a diverse representation of personality types we've got here. This should be more than enough to feed a drama and satiate it indefinitely. I can just see the episode titles now: "Bank Robbery at 5,000 Feet," "The Straight-In Narrow," "All's Well That Pays Well," "King of the Runway," "That Airplane Won't Wash," "A Nice Piece of Asphalt," "Sectionals and the Single Mom," "Bait-And-Master-Switch," "The Men on the Flying Trapeze," "Three (Hangar) Doors Down," "Tom Takes a Trip"...need I go on?

And think of the guest-stars! Elderly couples from Cable and Tehachapi. That thirtysomething NASA engineer with the kit-built canard plane. Warbirds from Chino, like Thunderbolts and Corsairs. Businessmen and peace officers in Pilatus PC-12s. (Why, the lieutenant-governor of California flew in once in his Cessna 414.) Glider pilots from Palmdale. Weekenders from Big Bear City, Lake Havasu, Las Vegas, Flagstaff and Phoenix: Comanches, Arrows, Barons, Skyhawks, Centurions and Cardinals. Cross-country trekkers from Alaska and the Midwest, in tail-draggers like Cessna 185s, Piper Cubs and Bellanca Champs. Amphibians from Catalina Island and the coast. The personal transports of millionaires and sports players, Caravans and Citations and Phenoms. 

Why, as I type these words, a skinny Japanese gent (with a T-shirt which reads Advanced World Aerobatics Championships, Team Japan 2008) is standing here, working on the computer in the pilot briefing room. Now he moves into the lobby and I can hear him conversing rapidly with his copilot, a shorter, balding man in an olive-drab flight suit. Who are they? Where are they going? What did they fly in on? How far is it from here to Japan, anyway? Can I hitch a ride, boys? 

Such drama!