GARY WAYNE COX
Aircraft: November…7…3…2…8…Golf…departing runway 2…1…to the north…
Unicom: No other reported traffic…Have a safe trip…
Learning to fly an airplane is not hard to do. It just requires a desire to learn and special training. Managing airspeed and controlling the airplane is what it’s all about. All airplanes have specific characteristics pertaining to the type of plane it is. All airplanes fly a little differently, but the basic principle is this: An aircraft will remain stable and fly at a fast enough speed or an aircraft will become unstable and fall out of the sky without enough speed. The pilot’s responsibility is to know those speeds and recognize warning signs and be ready to react to maintain control of the aircraft.
I never learned to fly until 2000, at age 45, when I started managing Big Sandy Regional. You don’t need to know how to fly to manage an airport, but it does help. I have been around aviation ever since my brother, Larry Joe Cox, became a helicopter pilot about 40 years ago. He is an excellent pilot, has many hours in Bell helicopters and takes special training every year at the Bell training facility in Texas. He is currently flying for a company in Lexington.
I was sitting in the office during my first year managing the airport when a gentleman walked in and asked to speak to the new airport manager. I said, “Yes, sir, that would be me. How can I help you?”
“I’m also new on the job at the Paintsville/Johnson County Chamber of Commerce and I would like to invite you to speak at our luncheon sometime soon,” he said.
“I’m not sure I would have all that much to say. Don’t think it would take very long to tell what I know about running an airport,” I said.
“Our meeting just lasts about an hour, and we would just need a few minutes from you talking about the airport and your background. It doesn’t require you to talk all that long. I’m sure our members will be asking lots of questions, and that will probably take up most of the time. I’ll pencil you in for noon next Thursday if you like,” he said.
I agreed to the meeting and started thinking about what I could say about the airport that they probably didn’t already know. I took lots of pictures of the different aircraft and the beautiful sunrises, sunsets and cloud formations when I started running the airport, so I took my pictures with me when I went to the meeting. The chamber of commerce had just a few minutes of business to discuss then they turned the floor over to me. I was introduced as Big Sandy Regional’s new airport manager.
I handed out my pictures to be passed around while I was talking and told my audience the facts about our airport — Big Sandy Regional is owned by Floyd, Johnson, Magoffin and Martin counties and controlled by a board made up of members from each county. The airport runway is 5,000 feet long and 100 feet wide, with a parallel taxiway that runs the length of the runway. The runway is large enough to handle almost any corporate jet, and our airport should always be considered an important part of our business infrastructure. Just like our four-lane highways, our runway is an important part of our community. There is a saying in aviation, “A mile of asphalt will take you a mile, but a mile of runway will take you anywhere in the United States.” We are located only 1 mile from Eastern Kentucky Industrial Park and it’s not unusual to have businesses fly into Big Sandy to do business there. (Just last week, a plane from Texas visited Boxvana.)
As I thought, it only took about five minutes to tell all I knew about our airport, so I asked my audience for questions. The very first question was, “How long have you been a pilot?”
I told the lady asking the question, “I’m not a pilot.”
She responded, “Oh my goodness. You run our airport and you don’t even know how to fly an airplane.”