From the earlier AirChicago business. This original material describes past programs, people or events. Prices, schedules, memberships and endorsements here are not current offers or representations of today’s website. Explore current travel options.
October 26, 2016 // 8:00AM
Written by: David Koch
An Introduction to the Founder of AirChicago – Captain David Koch
Welcome aboard. This is your captain speaking—literally. I was a pilot for United Airlines for over 22 years. I’ve been an air traveler even longer. If we define air traveler as “one who travels by air for their business and personal needs either as a passenger or as a pilot”, then I began my journey as an air traveler in 1963 when I was 16-years old. That was the year my flight instructor, a moonlighting Delta Airlines pilot, signed me off for solo-cross-country flying. I actually started flying before that when in 1958 at the age of 11, I took my first flying lesson. My first airline flight as a passenger occurred in 1965 when I was 18. I’ve been an inveterate air traveler ever since.
When I started my airline career in 1968 as a pilot for United Airlines, air travel was still a much-anticipated, exciting, enjoyable, efficient and valuable experience. And it got better virtually every year—newer, faster, more-efficient and more-comfortable airplanes; with more destinations made accessible by the rapidly growing fleets of jet airliners. And, advances in technology and aviation-human-factors research were swiftly making air travel much safer than in the past.
During my first decade in the airline industry, the refrain of every industry leader was “higher, faster, farther”. In fact, this had been the industry mantra from the days of the Wright Brothers until 1978 when the Airline Deregulation Act was imposed on the industry. However, by the early-1980s, the mantra of the new breed of industry leaders that Wall Street installed in the executive suites of all the major airlines was “cheap, cheaper, cheapest”. It is still their mantra today. That thinking has resulted in an inefficient, hard-to-access, uncomfortable, less-safe-than-it-could-be, inconvenient, time-wasting, frustrating, demeaning and unenjoyable air travel system that resembles the inter-city-bus operations of old.
In this blog, I will share with you how I believe you and I can enjoy a much better form of air travel. I will also endeavor to educate you about some of the “behind-the-scenes” aspects of today’s airline system, and I’ll talk about how the AirChicago system of private-jet travel will provide you with an enhanced life style at an affordable price.
This vision of a better way to fly is explained in detail in my third book “Air Travelers Heaven”. This blog will contain excerpts from the book and other observations on the state of air travel.