Monday, August 17, 2009

Dateline Woodstock
Several months ago, we wrote to you about Jacob Hammond and his brother Jeb who have been discussing ways to reduce the cost of air travel. It may interest you to know that the Hammond boys have decided to join forces and start their own airline. Their inspiration came from a television show on The Discovery Channel describing the vast supply of military aircraft languishing in the desert just outside Phoenix, Arizona. According to the plan, JJ Air (as they plan to call their new venture) will employ a fleet of planes utilizing state-of-the-art US Defense Department technology, thus rendering them -- and this is a critical element to the plan -- invisible to radar. Jake and Jeb figure a stealth airline can perform in ways not even industry-leader Southwest can match. Speaking from a upturned apple crate at Woodstock's Squat and Gobble (our local eatery) Jeb explained that the big problem with commercial aviation today is that conventional planes! can be detected by Air Traffic Control, which if you have watched CBS Sixty Minutes you know is run by severely overstressed people sitting in gloomy rooms drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups and staring at little radar dots. Naturally, air traffic controllers get grumpy, which is why they routinely order the daily Burlington VT to Boston MA flight to circle Mexico City just out of spite. They won't be able to do that stuff with JJ Air. They won't even be aware that a JJ Air flight is in the vicinity until one comes screaming past the control tower at Mach 2, requesting an emergency landing. Jake and Jeb plan to remove the restrooms from each plane to make room for an expanded wet-bar, so they figure that over 93% of all JJ Air flights will require an emergency landing. According to their initial press release, the details of the new air service will be revealed on CNN's Larry King Live show, or in case of a scheduling conflict with the next Michael Jackson Special, Woodstock Community Cablevision. If you can't catch WCC on your cable TV system, let us know and we'll report the results to you in a future issue.

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