I Deducted Breakfast This Morning

I am a charter and founding member (whatever that means) of the Greater Northern Alabama Lying Pilots Coffee Drinking and Hangar Talking Society. Members who are in town meet weekday mornings at Mullins Restaurant in Huntsville, AL, where the special each morning is two sausage biscuits for one dollar! That’s all we do, by the way. We eat breakfast and talk. We get a small but interesting crowd. At one time or another we get a FedEx pilot, a USAirways pilot, two retired rocket engineers, one surgeon pilot, and a high-tech aerial photographer (he has taken pictures from the Panama Canal to Minnesota). And this morning Matt Rainey showed up. We hadn’t seen much of Matt lately. He has been busy. Matt, an engineer, has been the acting product manager for the Army's light utility helicopter (LUH). That means he had to get manufacturers to bid, then get the Army to buy (that is called a Milestone C Production Decision by Army leadership). We’re talking about a huge contract here—322 twin-turbine helicopters plus maintenance, training, and supplies. The total cost will be in the neighborhood of $3 billion before all is said and done. The contract was recently let to EADS and a slew of other companies such as Socata, CASA, ATR, and, it seems to me, just about everybody else who ever built any part of any aircraft. While loading up biscuits with honey at Mullins this morning, Matt explained the process much better than I could understand it. Matt is by far the youngest member of our group, and it truly amazes me that he was in charge of all that. Our Army and National Guard will be using those helicopters for years to come. For the rest of my life I will probably be bragging about knowing the guy who got the job done. We'd love to post your comments. Please click the comment box at the top.