September 11th. Plus Two.

Today, and in ensuing days, we're going to be treated to yet more dramatic footage of once majestic aircraft being used as tools of death and destruction. The sleek, swift wings of American Freedom were turned from tools of commerce and transportation into something horrific, threatening and fearsome. It should not have been that way... but the perversion of a Godly concept by a small group of cowards and miscreants turned a symbol of our freedom into a threat that is still being used to attack every aspect of what it is to be an American.

Like many, people we knew and cared for were among those lost that day and it pains us to have to remember them in the past tense. It also hurts to watch something else we love be blamed (in part) for their having left our senses all too soon.

Over and over again, media reports will force us to have to watch proud aircraft be used to kill people and change our lives...

Over and over again, aviation will be viewed as a reluctant tool of fear and intimidation...

Over and over again, a part of our lives that is both necessary and useful, will be diminished in the eyes of the world because of the psychotic whims of a few bastards who's monstrously distorted view of God was used to reinforce their insanity and the fact that they had no respect for the value of the lives or freedoms they were assaulting. It is a hard thing for aviators, the world over, to view... again and again.

We can't escape this imagery. It's everywhere... shown intermittably, over and over again.

But... let me offer one other set of images that literally brought tears to my eyes two nights ago. While other channels on the TV were already starting the visual death march toward 9/11, another showed a small aircraft, a Learjet, taxiing out into the night with a crew of Doctors on an urgent mission.

Over the course of a few hours, this beautiful aircraft served as an indispensable angel of mercy to a transplant team that traveled hundreds of miles to harvest a new heart for a critically ill infant that was but a few months old and near death. A tiny little infant lay strapped to a hospital bed, all manner of tubes and instruments attached, looking to all the world like a tiny doll... barely alive, sustained only by too many miracles of technology to document. It was a heart-rending, brutal sight... especially when viewed right after scenes of this child's parents waiting fearfully in search of the miracle that would allow their baby to live.

That miracle happened. And an airplane delivered it... literally.

As God called one tiny soul home to him hundreds of miles away, the opportunity arose for this child's life to be spared. Via the Lear, a dedicated medical team was able to harvest the heart of a donor child and speed it to an operating room hundreds of miles away, in less than the medically mandated four hour limit for a human heart in transport. That airplane gave this tiny child a chance to live. The Lear was seen as an angel of mercy, the aircraft a tool of good and caring, and a magical steed from which to mount a righteous battle for the life of a tiny little baby that hadn't had a chance to have much of an effect on anyone except for the parents who fretted over every breath and every struggling heartbeat.

To them, that airplane became a deliverer of hope and promise... and while the rest of the world was treated to images of what airplanes might do in the hands of madmen; their view was of a scene that is repeated in various forms hundreds of times a day... with an airplane as a conduit of hope, commerce, joy, freedom and caring.

That airplane played a small part in the saving of that lovely child's life and I am pleased to say that the operation went well and the child was reported to have a chance at a quasi-normal life. Elsewhere, other airplanes are having such noble effects... some just as critical and many more less so, but none-the-less important, to a world that needs to stay mobile and free.

All over the world other airplanes are saving lives, connecting loved ones, watching over the globe and providing hope and safety to those in need. That's the image I prefer to associate with airplanes, and over the coming days, as the images of September 11th are yet again burned into our tortured souls, I urge you to think past the horror and remember the...

• Aerial fire fighters that are battling all over the planet to save our forests and homes,
• to the medevac helos that are rushing the unfortunate to an emergency care center,
• the GA and Commercial birds that are bringing families together and loved ones home,
• the proud military birds that remain vigilant in the protection of our freedoms,
• the traffic spotters that help us all get home a little faster and little easier,
• that transport the businessmen who control thousands of jobs as they seek new opportunities and continued employment for those who depend on them,
• the sport pilots who play each day in the skies of over a free America CLEARLY demonstrating what this country is REALLY all about,
• and all other manner of ways in which Wilbur and Orville's gift to the world is not subverted from it's greater purpose--to FLY.

That's the way I think of airplanes... and I hope that each of you will be able to get back to such thoughts once the morbid hysteria of the moment passes and we can think again of what we might do to bring sanity to a world that seems a bit crazier than it used to be.

We have much work to do... and many solutions to find if we are to bring some measure of sanity back to the world... and God willing, aviators and airplanes will be a critical and visible part of the solution... Remember that and be sure to share that message with all those you know and care for. This is the message that needs to be told... over and over again. -- Jim Campbell, ANN Editor-In-Chief

FMI: www.aero-news.net