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| Eclipse |
September 17, 2007 |
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Dear Friends,
I'm not a pilot, but I love airplanes. I grew up around them and some of my fondest memories of childhood are associated with flying.
My grandfather was a barnstormer who flew from field to field in the 1920s and 1930s giving people rides in his biplane -- some of whom had never seen an airplane before. He opened a number of airports around New England and I loved listening to his stories about the early days of aviation.
My father started flying when he was 13 and was a commercial pilot as well as a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association. On weekends, we would go to the little airport near where we lived where he would spend time with his friends and work on planes. I loved the sound of the swallows in the hangar and the smell of airplane engines. If we were good, sometimes we would go up flying. Dad was building an experimental open cockpit biplane. His buddy, Boomie, had a yellow Bonanza. We called it, "Boomie's Banana". Another of his friends would take us up frequently in his Piper Cub. (We'd beg him to leave the cockpit door open!)
I've been working with Eclipse Aviation since before they made the decision to come to Albuquerque. Last Thursday, they opened their first facility out at Double Eagle Airport. It's their training and customer care operation. My role, beyond encouraging them to come, has been to work with the other members of our delegation and the state and city and county to make sure the roads, water and runways are good enough at Double Eagle to make it the next epicenter of jobs on the west side.
Eclipse has 1300 employees with good paying jobs already and is producing jets for customers. I'd like to see Albuquerque be the place in America to be for small jet manufacturing. They are good jobs in a clean, low water use industry. But, for me, it's more than that. Watching single engine Cessnas take off from Double Eagle and the Eclipse 500 do a flyover just as we cut the ribbon, just makes me smile. I just love small airplanes.
It's good to be home,
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