Delmarva Today: 8-14-20
On a windy day in 1903, after an abortive first flight, brother Wilbur Wright took the controls and piloted the Wright brothers’ spruce constructed plane to a flight lasting 12 seconds over a distance of 120 feet. It was the first real flight of an engine powered aircraft. Twenty four years later it took Charles Lindbergh 33 and a half hours to fly 3,600 miles from New York to Paris in the first nonstop transatlantic flight. In 1989, the Concorde was capable of making the flight in just under three hours. The Concorde was retired in 2003. Today the normal flight time from New York to Paris is a little over seven hours in the Boeing 777.
My guest tomorrow morning on Delmarva Today is Captain Scott Slater. Scott pilots a Boeing 777 on the global route for FedEx. He flies to most of the major cities of the world: Paris, Cologne, Frankfort, Hong Kong, Dubai, Singapore, and Shanghai, to name a few. A former fighter pilot, Scott is a graduate of the Naval Academy. He was a Top Gun pilot and flew the FA-18 from aircraft carriers on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. In addition, Scott participated in an exchange program with the French patrolling the no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina. Based in Norfolk, in 2,000 he was selected Atlantic Fleet Pilot of the Year as well as Carrier Pilot of the Year. Scott talks about what it is like to fly the FA-18, his experience at Top Gun, and how Covid-19 has changed the way he and other pilots are greeted in the various cities he visits as a Boeing 777 pilot. In addition, Scott discusses testing for the virus how he and other pilots remain safe in this coronavirus infected world.
In the spirit of full disclosure, Scott Slater is my son-in-law.
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