Why?

SURPRISE: I live and breathe aviation.

There is just something about those big metal birds and all they’re capable of that has me falling more in love with them every day.

It’s not just about how majestic they look or how loud their engines roar…  and it’s certainly not just about who made them… or who bought them and how that customer chose to paint them—though I DO love a special livery!

It’s about more than aesthetics and superficialities—in fact, what I love most about airplanes directly correlates with what I love most about stories: the “why” behind them.

Every time I interview for a job, I make a point to tell the hiring manager how incredibly important it is to me to know that my work has purpose. Before I dive into anything, and I mean anything, I ask myself “Why?” It’s just part of how I am and how I think we all are as humans—when your heart’s not in it, it shows.

So, a huge part of why I love airplanes as much as I do is because of their “Why?” As much as I’d like to believe all the 747s, A340s and DC-10s are flying purely for my visual pleasure, that’s just not the case. They’re uniting families, they’re bringing people of all ages to places they’ve never been, they’re carrying your mail… your packages, and they’re delivering supplies to people and countries in need.

Aviation is about so much more than bringing families to Disney World or getting you and me across the ocean. It’s altogether about so much more than transporting people… take the air cargo market, for example. It’s growing really, really fast, and I think that’s something a lot of non-AV geeks don’t really realize. Even if you’ve never flown, your life is so dependent on the aviation industry… just watch “Living in the Age of Airplanes” and you’ll get it.

At any given moment, there are nearly 10,000 planes in the sky carrying more than a million people and a heck of a lot of cargo—cars, animals, food, you name it. That’s remarkable, don’t you think?