Friends send their smart kids to the Buckingham Browne and Nichols private school in Cambridge. They texted me from Disney World in mid-March. Public schools in Massachusetts have one-week breaks in February and April. It is tough to go anywhere warm during these breaks due to airline tickets and hotel rooms being scarce and expensive. It seems that BB&N does a two-week break in March. Kids can travel to Asia and have enough time to de-jetlag. Families can take a one-week or 10-day trip without having to pay $1,200 per airline ticket.
If it works for the BB&N families, why can’t a public school system do it too?
I talked to our town’s superintendent. She said that there is no law requiring a mass exodus in Mass (so to speak), but that talk of a change gets shut down due to (1) trying to keep athletic team schedules in sync and, more importantly, (2) keeping school employees who have children in nearby local school systems in vacation sync with their kids.
But maybe it would make sense if the whole state moved to a two-week block? Then there wouldn’t be a mad rush for Logan Airport on a Friday afternoon. People would naturally end up with slightly staggered travel schedules because not too many families would go away for the entire two weeks.
Why does an accomplished pilot and aircraft owner care about airline tickets? Although you do have a point with the hotel rooms…. However usually your over priced FBO can get you a great hotel rate!
I wonder how many kids there have parents that work at Bolt. Beranek, & Newman
toucan sam: Come join us for a February vacation by Cirrus SR20! We’ll stop eating after Christmas so that we won’t be over-gross. We can wait three days in Boston for icing conditions to clear out. Then we can have a 10-hour flight against headwinds to a Caribbean island with a life raft on your lap in case the single piston engine decides to quit. Then we can get stuck in North Carolina on the way back waiting for ice-filled clouds to dissipate.
I have flow in a small aircraft from Dallas to Boston. It is not a serious alternative to flying commercial. It takes longer, at least cost comparable just from the fuel alone and less (yes, less!) comfortable.
But hey, at least you can tell everyone you took a private plane!
poor ignorant: My old DA-40 was 30-40 degrees hotter inside than outside due to the monster Plexi canopy. On long solo cross-country flights I would remove my shoes, socks, and blue jeans once inside. Then start putting them back on after landing at an airport where the temperature was, say, 60 degrees F. The entire flight was done sweating while barefoot and in boxer shorts. Not exactly the image that comes to most folks’ mind when they hear “traveling by private aircraft”.
You’re not casting GA in a very positive light here, Phillip.
> If it works for the BB&N families, why can’t a public school system do it too?
If all schools do the same, then those 2 weeks will be a cram week for which airlines, hotels, parks, etc. will quickly jack up their prices during those 2 week to take advantage of vacationers.
The biggest shock for me here in Texas is that y’all get two spring breaks with (from my point of view) no spring weather. Our schools here would never let the kids escape standardized test prep for a while second week – since that seems to be the entire point of the spring semester.
Anonymous: With rare exceptions, light GA is not about transportation. If you want regional transportation, get a Honda Accord. If you want long distance transportation, get a JetBlue ticket. If you are a rich bastard, sign up to NetJets (airline transportation for 1-2 passengers at a time). Light GA is a personal challenge and about learning.
George: I don’t think it is true that the entire two-week block will be “a cram week”. A lot of parents have jobs and can’t take two weeks off in the spring. If families are generally taking one-week trips at some point within a 16-day block, that is not “cramming”.
Gangstead: We are still waiting for spring (32-39 degrees and cloudy/rainy today).
@philg: I can’t even imagine trying to remove my jeans while piloting a plane. (Removing them while a passenger in a light plane actually doesn’t sound like fun, either) I guess I’m glad you didn’t try putting them back on while getting ready to land. Hats off to you! I wonder if an ice vest or a fluid-filled cooling vest might make the whole thing a little better?
superMike: Now that I think about it, I might have done much of the stripping down before takeoff. The DA-40 is kind of challenging due to the stick in the middle of the seat! Remember that there is an autopilot!
http://www.veskimo.com/personal-cooling-vest-systems.php
looks like it might be useful. It claims to run for four hours, which is longer than the typical GA leg. FBOs always have ice for the jets.
Leaks would not be fun in an airplane, though.
https://www.thermapparel.net/shop/festival
seems to rely on freezer packs and lasts for only 1.5 hours, but that is enough time to get up to altitude where it will be cooler. Or it would last for most of a flying lesson (where you’re stuck low to the ground in the hot zone).
It is too bad that there isn’t one that cools purely with electricity (Peltier).
I am sorry! I thought I read on here that you got a PC12 or Cessna Mustang. My bad, didn’t realize you were still flying the death defying piston single. I will however take you up on your offer and fly in the SR20 with you. Maybe you could demonstrate Cirrus’s spin recovery technique while your at it.
toucan: Note that the original post is about more than one family.
At a different scale, but for similar reasons, regarding public schools, France is divided in three zones to handle the holiday rush (and to prevent all families from going on ski holidays all at the same time). In their case this only applies for the winter holiday (~February) and spring break (~April).
Switzerland does a similar staggering of school vacation periods, for different Cantons.
Let me give the Norwegian perspective.
First it was fine to take off for spring or winter vacation a week early. Then a substantial minority arrived counter to the majority’s will. Since the minority suffers greatly from lack of academic performance, and sometimes from getting sent abroad and getting married to their cousins, absenteeism became serious. Now child protective services easily raise their ugly head with any unexplained absence from school, even when the kid involved has no academic problems what so ever, so Norwegian families with kids can absolutely not get the great charter trip deals!
PS:
Phil deserves an appropriate Gulfstream or Learjet!
Viking: Now that Hillary won’t be needing her minimum G450 (see http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clintons-private-jet-tab ) as frequently I would be happy to take it over at the same rate that she was personally paying (i.e., $0! I assume that the Wall Street banks hiring her to speak and/or the Clinton Foundation were paying).
And a new-ish Gulfstream might be a reasonable substitute for an airline ticket, but as you go back into the Learjet inventory to something that is affordable the dispatch rate goes down. Even the airlines don’t have a perfect dispatch rate, but it doesn’t matter because they eventually roll out one of their other airplanes as a substitute. Suppose that we did get together with another family and sunk $950,000 each into a 1999 Lear 45 (see https://www.controller.com/listings/aircraft/for-sale/23306299/1999-learjet-45 ) with fresh paint and interior. A flat tire at any point during a journey would likely mean a scramble for last-minute airline tickets.
Flying your own (single) airplane is great if you don’t care where you end up on any particular evening (or week!). It is about the journey, not the destination. I think this is why rich people sign up to NetJets even when the economics might favor direct ownership and operation. If the NetJets plane breaks there is another one right behind it.
(All of that said, the other day I did a business trip to Philadelphia in the SR20. I departed 27 hours prior to my required show time. In the event of bad weather I was prepared to abandon the airplane at $25/night parking fee at PHL and airline it back or wait an extra 24-36 hours. But it was just me and an instrument student, not me and a family whose priority is transportation, not aviation. And I was happy to arrive early and see the Barnes Foundation.)
There’s always the great American roadtrip if you don’t want to pay high spring break airfares. The private school kids and their parents compete with college kids, as both break toward the middle of March. Public school kids break in late March or early April, but a smaller percentage of them probably travel via air, so an equilibrium is reached???
Now that I’m living in a less affluent area than my previous “Inside the Beltway” super zip code, where a good contingent of the families headed to Florida or similar for “spring break,” it’s clear that “staycations” are quite popular.