Pilots take to the classroom as to the air

By Richard N. Velotta

Friday, April 30, 2010 | 3 a.m.

Most teachers agree that a guest speaker is a valuable part of the learning experience.

And when the speaker is fun, interesting and even passes out treats … what’s not to like?

Welcome to Jeff Asis’ fifth-grade class at Carolyn Reedom Elementary School in southwest Las Vegas, one of the newest participants in Southwest Airlines’ Adopt-A-Pilot program.

Standing before 24 inquisitive fifth-graders is Capt. Gregg Pendleton, who has been flying for 37 years and first climbed into a cockpit when he was a teenager.

Today’s No. 1 topic: that volcano in Iceland that crippled travel between the United States and Europe and resulted in a $1.7 billion loss to the aviation industry.

“We can fly through thunderstorm clouds — but we really don’t like to if we don’t have to,” Pendleton told the class. “But we can’t fly through volcanic dust clouds. Why not?”

It didn’t take long for the class to snap into action and deduce that the particulates produced by the volcano could damage a jet engine in seconds and the abrasive qualities of the cloud could scratch and damage an aircraft’s exterior and destroy glass.

“I was only diverted around a volcanic dust cloud once,” Pendleton said. “I was flying over … Kansas.”

Some students were puzzled because as far as they knew, there aren’t any active volcanoes in Kansas.

“The ash cloud came from a volcano in Alaska,” he said. “The wind currents pushed it into the airspace over Kansas.”

During Pendleton’s 45 minutes in the classroom, the class talked about essays the students were writing in a competition for a scholarship, saw a slide show of the artwork the class was working on to enter a contest for next year’s Adopt-A-Pilot tie design and discussed one of the weirdest things a colleague of his had seen when flying. (More about that later.)

The Adopt-A-Pilot program has been a Southwest staple since 1997. Since the program began in conjunction with the U.S. Education Department’s “America Goes Back to School” effort, more than 280,000 students have been involved. Today, about 780 Southwest pilots participate in the program and 34,000 students a year benefit.

Although pilots from all over the system can participate, the program soared in Las Vegas when Southwest established a pilot base at McCarran International Airport, the company’s largest station.

Today more than 220 Las Vegas-based pilots participate in the program, making it one of the most active stations in Southwest’s system.

Adopt-A-Pilot has an established curriculum, and pilots lead students through lessons on science, geography, math, creative writing and other core subjects based on aviation-related activities. Students also learn about careers, and pilots teach the values of F.L.I.G.H.T. — fearlessness, leadership, imagination, gratitude, honesty and tenacity.

Every year, Adopt-A-Pilot registration opens in September and continues through November. By the end of that month, administrators match pilots with classrooms. Classes and pilots learn their assignments by e-mail in December, and program supplies are sent to pilots in January.

The program kicks off in February and ends in June. In most cases, the pilot spends one hour a week in the classroom for four weeks, spreading it out over the length of the program.

Pendleton’s freewheeling conversational style is a little different from most of Southwest’s Adopt-A-Pilot curriculum because most of the class were exposed to the program as fourth-graders. Most pilots focus on geography, the scientific principles of how a plane flies and complex math problems involving how much fuel is burned on a trip from one point to another based on the variables pilots consider when they fly.

Because most of Asis’ class saw the curriculum the previous year, and Pendleton wanted to be in a class in the school where his two daughters attend, a special accommodation was reached so that Pendleton could talk about current events in aviation and talk with the students about things they wanted to talk about.

The volcanic eruption was big news, and the students wanted to hear more about it. Reedom Principal Douglas Wilson even stopped by to hear about the volcano.

But Pendleton knew he couldn’t carry the whole class on that discussion, so he also arranged to have the slide show.

On the day of his presentation, Pendleton wore his student-designed Adopt-A-Pilot tie. In an earlier visit, he passed out tie templates and invited the students to design ties for next year’s Adopt-A-Pilot participants.

After talking awhile about the volcano, Pendleton invited a special guest — his wife, Angel, a Southwest flight attendant — to pass out treats the couple were able to get from Southwest’s supplies. The treat were pretzels and Cheese Nips — no Southwest peanuts allowed because of the risk of allergies.

Angel Pendleton doesn’t usually work on the same crew as her husband, but she enjoys being the center of attention when it’s treat time. She works career days with her husband and met him while sitting together on a flight.

Once the treats were distributed, Pendleton talked with the class about the maximum altitude Southwest’s Boeing 737s fly.

“How high do we fly, do you remember?” Pendleton said.

A couple of hands flew up: “41,000 feet,” one student answered.

“So how high do you think we’d see a balloon?” he said. Pendleton answered his own question, telling students he once saw a foil balloon at 20,000 feet.

“But what was one of the weirdest things a pilot has ever seen up there?”

Pendleton then told the story of Larry Walters of California, who flew to about 16,000 feet in a lawn chair suspended from helium-filled balloons. Walters surprised an airline pilot who saw him over Los Angeles. Pendleton said Walters had planned to take a pellet gun to shoot some of his balloons to keep from flying too high or far away. But his liftoff was so abrupt he dropped the pellet gun on takeoff.

The students were dazzled. And so was their teacher.

Asis knew a little about the Adopt-A-Pilot program, but was always interested in flying.

“When I was growing up, I always wanted to be fighter pilot,” he said.

“I always kept that dream going and even now I like drawing airplanes,” Asis said. He has models and displays in his classroom.

For Pendleton, the Adopt-A-Pilot program — and being a pilot — is all about having fun.

“When I talk to these students about careers, I tell them if you really love what you do, you never have to work a single day,” he said. “I do this because I have fun. The most important thing is that we have fun.”

Taxi statistics

March statistics distributed by the Nevada Taxicab Authority are another indication that Southern Nevada’s tourism economy is rebounding.

For the first quarter of 2010, taxi trips were up 7.2 percent to 6.3 million trips compared with the first quarter of 2009.

In March, Clark County’s 16 cab companies had increases with Deluxe (19 percent), Lucky (11.8 percent) and Western (11 percent) showing double-digit percentage growth compared with March 2009 numbers.

Yellow Cab, the city’s busiest operator, had an 8.5 percent increase to 242,747 rides for the month, closely followed by sister company Checker Cab, up 8.9 percent to 240,135 rides.

All but one industry indicator showed improvement in March compared with the same month the previous year. Revenue per shift was up 3.9 percent to $273.85. Trips per shift climbed 7 percent to an average 20.3 trips. Taxi trips per medallion were up 7.4 percent to 1,248 for the month and revenue per medallion climbed 4.3 percent to $16,869 for March.

Revenue per trip was down for the month compared with March 2009, with revenue off 2.9 percent to $13.51.

Giving travelers a break

When Florida-based Spirit Airlines announced plans to charge a fee for carry-on luggage, some consumers worried that others in the airline industry would follow the small carrier’s lead and impose similar fees.

But that doesn’t appear to be the case and some of the big players in the industry are promising not to go down Spirit’s path.

Spirit announced earlier this month that beginning in August it would charge a $45 carry-on fee. That led to a promise to New York Sen. Charles Schumer that American, Delta, United, US Airways and JetBlue would not impose a similar fee despite the bad quarterly earnings that have begun coming out.

It wasn’t clear how long that promise is good for.

Meanwhile, Schumer and five other Democratic senators — Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Ben Cardin of Maryland, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey — said they would support legislation that would tax airlines if they charge carry-on bag fees.

The carry-on bag fee and other ancillary revenue sources are being used to head off losses resulting from higher fuel costs, bad weather that grounded flights and the volcanic dust cloud that grounded thousands of flights.