01.04.08
The Airplane is Flat, Too
Perhaps you don’t know, but one of my “life list” dreams is to become a pilot. I’ve been spending “fun money” on plane rides and “introductory pilot lessons” since I was sixteen. I’m at a point in my life where I’ve laid it down: I want to be flying before my 40th birthday, a little more than a year away. So that makes me look not just at education blogs and trends, but also into aircraft. Without spending too much of your time, you might be interested in the fact that the FAA a few years ago opened up a new certification of aircraft that specify small, light, and potentially affordable airplanes. It’s called “Light Sport Aircraft”, and if you’re interested, click to check it all out. Namely, we’re talking about small (2 person), inexpensive airplanes that are safer than “ultralights”.
Now even if you don’t know about airplanes, I’m guessing that you know about Cessna. In non-airplane circles, the word “Cessna” is used as a descriptor for small airplanes like “Xerox” is used to describe the act of photocopying images to paper. Well Cessna has decided to re-energize their business by entering the Light Sport market – and has announced a plane, the Skycatcher, that costs around $100,000 – which by aviation standards is pretty darn cheap. Consider that many planes last 30 or more years and the cost of this airplane is very low.
Cessna is actually a pretty progressive company. The Skycatcher website is actually an RSS-fed Blog. This means that they can communicate with their user- and customer-base rapidly. But being “progressive” also means that they are globally competitive. You see… Cessna has decided that the only way to compete in today’s global aerospace industry is to outsource the production of the new aircraft. So that means that Cessna went out and asked various firms to bid on a serious (700+ aircraft per year) commitment, including a complete re-tooling of a factory. Who could do it to exacting standards AND be competitive? Why Shenyang Aircraft Company, of course. A Chinese aerospace firm with contracts with Boeing and Airbus to mention a few.
It may come as a surprise to some that the regular readers of Cessna’s blog completely FREAKED OUT. You can read Cessna’s blog entry, titled: Making the Case for Building the Skycatcher in China. The comments are overwhelmingly negative, “you’ve lost me as a customer”. As I’m reading all of these negative comments, I can’t help but question: where do these people buy their electronics? I haven’t seen a TV made in the US in a long time. How about their car? Even if it IS assembled in the US, how many of the parts weren’t?
Here’s the thing: Cessna hasn’t shipped skilled jobs overseas – they’re keeping the engineers and quality service people. They’re just sending laborer positions to China. In fact, Cessna employees will be moved to China to oversee the assembly. The skilled, CREATIVE jobs stay with US employees. The “part A goes in slot B” job goes to China. While my description might seem crass, it is not new – read The World is Flat or A Whole New Mind - we are living in a global economy – if we expect to compete, we can’t continue to teach our students to become assemblers.
Superintendents/Guidance Counselors/Curriculum Advisers: take note to what Cessna has done. Airplane design IS about Mathematics, but it is also about style, about form, and about design. What is content without creativity? 01101110011011110111010001101000011010010110111001100111
