The Flying Phone Card

The flying phone card

BY Ralph Hood

September 1999

I'm a founding member of the North Alabama Lying Pilots Hangar Flying and Coffee Drinking Society. The society has operated continuously for over ten years now, and meets at 7:30, more or less, every weekday morning at Michael's restaurant in Hunts-ville, AL. The members are all pilots and all opinionated.

It's a diverse group, made up of several present and retired rocket engineers, one owner/operator of an aerial photography company, and one professional liar. (Guess who.)

In the lobby of Michael's sits a machine that is amazing to me (but to nobody else).

The machine will sell you a prepaid, long distance telephone card for 7.9 cents per minute. It is studiously ignored by most, but I see it as an omen of change.

I am not amazed that telephone time is available for 7.9 cents per minute, but I am absolutely dumbfounded that they can sell you the telephone time and keep the books for 7.9 cents per minute.

Think about it: I can buy one of the cards for as little as $10. Somewhere a computer sets up an account for just $10. When I use the card, it determines that, yes, we do owe this guy $10 worth of phone calls. It then calculates the charge, recalculates the balance, and stands prepared to do it all over again on the next call. All that for a $10 sale, and it doesn't even know who bought the card! (These cards are very popular with people who for one reason or another do not want any record, anywhere, of certain long distance calls.)

Folks, if the technology exists to do all of that — plus provide the phone calls — and still make a profit on a $10 sale, think of where we can go from here. Maybe there could be a card for rental pilots. A woman from Florida wants to rent a Cessna 182 from your FBO in Kansas. You don't know her from Adam's second wife, but she does have a card issued by the Amalgamated Aviation Insurance Carriers.

You insert said card into the slot and it says, yep, the woman is qualified and current in the 182. Has flown one 97 hours in the last year, in fact, and got a biennial flight review in one just 40 days ago by an Amal-gamated certified CFI. Since your FBO carrier participates in the Amalgamated program, she is automatically an approved pilot on your policy.

You can turn her loose without even a checkride. The same card could provide instant maintenance records on any airplanes.

Let the good times roll.

On the other hand... I fear the guvmint will jump on this with both feet, if they ever find out about it. It's what they have always wanted. Big Brother won't even have to watch you. You will have a card that keeps track of every single transaction, both income and outgo, and figures your income tax for you. Wouldn't that be great? Then the guvmint could sell the information to credit card companies, insurance agents, and Ed McMahon. The resultant income could be used to reduce the deficit.

Yeah, right.