John Galt Presents: Wings Over Thailand

This week I am going to bring your some information about a new flight school that has been established here in Nakhon Phanom. I first heard about a plan to bring a flight school year about 8 months ago. I discounted it as rumor at the time thinking that I didn't understand why a school would be set up here. We are in a fairly remote place in the world and certainly there are no local amenities that would add to the value of a flight school up the Northeast of Issan. Granted, the expenses are low, that that in itself is attractive. But, still; why here?

Well, as it turns out -- there is a reason for everything -- especially those things you don't understand (that is what makes Thailand amazing to the casual observer). So, take a guess why we have a flight school here? Go on - I'll give you one guess..... Well, as it turns out, we have local guy who is a has rather large pull with the Thai government and I have written him before. You may have guessed, the former prime Thailand prime minister Khun Chawalit. Seems that during the previous Thaksin administration, plans were formed by the Ministry of Education to establish a high end flight school. And the word is that Chawalit has some influence in that plan. By the time that coop occurred, money had been spent and planes and flight simulators. Rumour would have it that the flight school here is at some odds with the Royal Thai Air force. Seems that some of the Air Force boys give flight instruction near Bangkok and there is some speculation that this school would not have made it through to the funding stage if the military had sufficient influence early on. To add more confusion to the mix, the main airport here is under the direct authority of the Royal Thai Airforce, so some bureaucratic quagmire is being waded through right now in making final preparations to house the aircraft and establish the maintenance departments at the airport.

But, fate being what it is, the school is here. The wheels are moving forward and it looks like nothing it going to stop it at this point. It has equipment on the ground, planes in the sky and classroom / executive teaching space at the local, recently built, university (I wonder if this new college facility was a Chawalit effort?).

This flight school is not a typical. It's a high end school. It's primary goal is to train young pilots for entry into the fields of professional commercial aviation. This is a school you would attend if your primary career goal was to fly full sized jet aircraft.

This school is seeking out relationships with international carriers with whom they will accept cadets from. Here is how it basically works: The cadet comes here first and undertakes his/her basic ground and flight school. They become competent in single engine, twin engine aircraft. They also do simulator work all the way up to fixed simulator training on an Airbus 320 flight simulator. Once this entire course is complete, and assuming the cadet has accomplished their goals, the cadet would finish their training at an Airbus or Boeing facility that has full size jet aircraft and full motion flight simulators. So, this school can get you through all the international training and certification for instrument ratings, teach you how to use all the most modern navigational aids, etc. The main training program even requires you to have 5 hours of flight in a high horsepower acrobatic plane (this acrobatic plane will arrive in 4 or 5 months from now). I'm sure that I have over-simplified my description of the course here. There is much more to this rigorous 70 weeks course.

One of the extras that may be interesting to other pilots in the area is that some courses are offered that can help build your ratings if you already have a license to fly. And certainly there have been some other interested parties who are working with the school right now to enhance their training.

I get the distinct impression that they will not cater to new comers. Or, I sense they will discourage it. I believe they will limit their external offerings when the school is completely full of cadets -- which is a shame because I would certainly enjoy the chance to learn how to fly. I have never been close to a school such as this one with seasoned experienced and licensed commercial pilots - at least not at a time when I actually had some money that I could spend on it.

The head of the school is Capt Gerard (at right). He is a former Air France Capt with around 30 years experience. Most of those years he flew the Boeing 747. He was also certified on the Airbus 300.

I attended a small presentation on the schools offering and their view on the future of commercial aviation as a career. Here are a few clips from that presentation:

I met another former captain (pointed to with yellow arrow) he is another former with Air France pilot who flew A320's. I crossed paths with him and Capt

Gerard in a restaurant and we had and a discussion about wines and he was telling about how his father taught him to slow down and get to know the wine before you drink it. I thoroughly enjoyed watching him and Gerard wrenching open a 12 year old vintage and seeing them with such passion examining the cork and smelling the bouquet, and looking at the body and taste, and after taste. I thought to myself what a great cultural exchange program we have here in Thailand.

These are some of moments you need to appreciate and enjoy while you have them.

Anyhow, getting back to the school. There about about 15 other instructors from other parts of the world (India and Indonesia) and evidently they are also experienced commercial pilots. There are also a few younger flight instructor here too. I have seen them about the town enjoying themselves and making good use of the local natural Thai resources.

If you're going to learn how to fly, who better to study under? Right? If you're going to be putting your life at risk in an small aircraft, I would think you'd want to your skills to be pushed to the limits and receive instruction from those who are certainly accomplished in their profession. I know that I would want to learn to fly mainly because I think this is a rare opportunity to receive some of the best training you can get at a price that would in relative terms, a bargain.

We have the ground school. That is held in classrooms of course. These facilities are located at the new Nakhon Phanom University - third floor of the science buildings.

Another portion of the facility is located nearby. The following pictures are of the simulators arriving just a couple of months ago. The building was specially built to house these simulators. Right now they have a single engine simulator (at a cost of abou

t 3 or 4 million baht). They also have a twin engine simulator (cost of about 8 to 9 million baht) and scheduled to arrive in about another 6 to 8 months, an Airbus 320 simulator at a cost 100 million baht (3 million USD). This Airbus simulator is a fixed simulator - it is not the full motion simulator. They say the full motion simulator is approximately 7 or 8 times more expensive to buy and much more expensive to maintain. Not many training facilities have full motion simulators because of the cost factors. All cadets leaving here must make their way to facilities with full motion simulators and these facility are typically run by major air line training centers.

If you look on the cargo contain to the right, you'll see the code marking for the DA42 flight simulator. This is the twin engine flight simulator that matches the school's new twin engine aircraft.

These pictures were taken about 2 months ago and this facility is now completely set up except for the Airbus simulator which is due to arrive sometime near July of 2008.

And of course we have the airfield. All these planes are manufactured by the Diamond Aircraft. The planes that you see here are not the easiest planes to fly. These planes were chosen for their flight characteristics in comparison to jet aircraft. These would not be best planes to learn to fly if you were a casual pilot who flew a few weekends each year. These planes behave in a way that prepares you for more advanced aircraft. They have a lower wing, they are not completely forgiving. They are stable to fly but not overly stable. If you make a mistake, you'll feel it. Some over head winged aircraft are too stable for good flight training. I am told that these Diamond aircraft make for good training aircraft for cadets.

Not only are their handing similar in ways to more advanced aircraft but these planes are brand new and are utilizing the newest turbo diesel air craft engines. These plane use normal jet aircraft fuel. So, the are less expensive to operate and have greater ranges per liter of fuel. I am told that not only do they use 1/2 the fuel, but jet fuel is 1/2 expensive as standard aviation gas (AVGAS). So these these new planes reduce training/ownership costs.

These DA-40 are well equipped with some of the newest radio and navigational aids. I believe they currently have 6 of these aircraft.

This is a half million dollar (USD) aircraft. They current have one of these aircraft.

A visiting pilot based in Khon Khen emailed me some pictures of his visit to Nakhon Phanom. He came in an test flew the DA-42. This is how it looks out here from the air. Here is our airport and runway.

Below is a shot of Sakhon Nakon from the air. I emailed back to him saying that I didn't now they has so many lakes out there. He responded that these lakes are man made because you can still see the construction roads going into and out of them.

Here is an interesting article that surfaced today (March 6th) in the on-line version of the BangkokPost. Take a look at this in terms of pilot training and air traffic safety. When you read this article, keep in mind that the BangkokPost has to be guarded about what they say -- then read between the lines just a bit.

I kind of thought that aviation rules are set up to be globally equivalent in all counties? I do know that English is the globally accepted and required language for civil aviation. So why would Thai Aviation Law differ so much from the International accepted standards? Isn't that in itself extremely dangerous? Obviously is must be quite a bit different otherwise foreign pilots wouldn't need this "other" additional training.

I like this quote: "All of One-Two-Go's pilots were recruited from overseas. Many of them were from Indonesia, where air safety records are among the world's worst."

Take a look at this picture. What you're looking at here is an unconnected navigational radio antenna on a DA-40. That feature was not installed properly when the plane came out of a crate for assembly in Hua Hin. Do you know why this was left accidentally unconnected? For the simple reason that this navigational system was not functioning in Hua Hin... The pilot told me directly that they had no way to test this system because it was not working at Hua Hin before his departure.

If there are aviation safty issues to be solved, perhaps there is blame to be spread around a little bit....

I ponder what I read on the Thailand Internet sometimes. I like to compare my own experience to what I read. It's funny that I seem to pick up on things that I don't expect.

A few weeks back Stickman was giving a lecture on polishing up your techniques for approaching women. Do you remember that? It was the valentine's week column..... and I said to myself -- "Where did he get this concept of observing body odor from?" I thought to myself, this never occurred to me. It's not that I think this is a bad idea, it just seems to be a rare observation.

Here is what I'm thinking. Thailand is full of smells. We have the above ground septic systems -- those stink. We have the the unwashed wild dogs that roam around and defecate just anywhere and everywhere and that can be a bit unpleasant. We have the garbage baskets on the occasional street corner. We have open air cooking with grease (that tend to gag you when you pass by). Then we have the smells from dilapidated diesel trucks on the road spewing out clouds of chocking exhaust. On top of that we have the awful smelly crab juice which is mixed in with the local favor food called "Som Tum". In my estimation Thailand is just full of odors that may not necessarily be considered favorable, yet I don't hear too much complaining about them from the girls. I just don't.

I've had girls over visiting and swatting away mosquitoes while watching a DVD without any complaints... My experience has been that these girls (at least that ones that I hang out with) tend to be very tolerant of slight distractions....

I'm not in disagreement with the concept. I do believe that generally if you have a sufficiently bad enough body odor that they may find it unappealing and just not hang out with you.

What I am saying here is that if you have this on the top of your head and you write about it as Stickman has, then you must have had a situation to remember it by. You must of had a girl say something to you -- or you realized they were noticing your BO.

However, is also one more possibility that would be more likely and could be mistakenly overlooked. Girls don't usually come into contact with too many fragrances here. They may find a man's cologne completely foreign. So, you happen to use something as is common in west, you may be inadvertently turning the girls off because they don't appreciate the sent.

Stickman didn't really give us any other basic explanation now how he determined a girls sensitivity to order .... Anyhow, this if up for your own consideration..

I would have not thought girls were not all that sensitive to body smells, but if Stickman says they are -- then he must have his reasons. Perhaps he will be more willing to share the inspiration of his thoughts in future columns when he makes a point?

Here is a business tip. Accountability is a bit challenging here. You have to keep you eye on

things. That is the Thai way. People will take advantage of you in business if you are distracted and not watching everything (sound like a familiar theme?). One of the ways that I keep my employees honest is a time card machine. Another is I monitor what they are doing on a regular basis with task lists and another is that I set up systems to account for supplies. One of the items that I monitor is toilet paper. You may think this is funny but that commodity is more expensive here than in the west and it has a habit of fling out the door if you don't keep watch on it. So, I have to count it so there is some fear in the employees that I may notice it missing.

This next image is a task list (to the left) that serves two purposes. One I want a brief summary of their work during the day and two I have a end of the day check off list where chores must be completed. This task list is extremely successful. Thais are comfortable with it. In the west, we would hate it but here it helps to measure their performance and achievement and they seem to appreciate that. I think these are successful techniques to keep a business more efficient and they are worth giving a try if you are having problems with toilet paper flying out of your Thai business bathrooms.

I enjoy people watching (as you may have surmised by now). I was in a restaurant this week and I had already ordered and was patiently waiting at my table - alone.

I was at one of local spots where farang food can be purchased. Farang food cooked well is not a common offering up country and so this restaurant accommodates it's share of curious local Thais. Some come and order steak and other western style offerings. It's sometimes funny to watch them struggle with chewing tough steak all the while they are making the assumption that they are sampling a western treat....

Anyhow I was just thinking about work and relaxing. I had my hands clasped in front of me, elbows on the table and hands to my mouth and my eyes were wandering and I looked over to a table about 15 feet away. I noticed they were struggling with a ketchup bottle. And I didn't think too much of it.... and I looked away for a few moments and walked into the kitchen to check up on my order and came back to my seat.

I just replanted myself, and look over again and these Thais are digging into this standing ketchup bottle with a chop stick. They were stirring and pouring and stirring and pouring but that GD bottle just didn't seem to want to give up it's contents. I'm sure they were thinking that they were the unlucky bunch who received a faulty batch of ketchup.

For a brief moment I had this devious thought of going over and suggesting to them that they would do quite well to put that bottle in the micro-wave for a few minutes to "loosen it up a bit", knowing they would probably experience a nice ketchup volcano in there, but I held back... and enjoyed the thought and suppressed a laugh.

It is moments like these that I fully appreciate the differences between our cultures. What may seem so simple to a 5 year old in the west may be a complete puzzle to Thais here. And certainly the reverse is true as well. This is one of those moments where you are reminded that you may not really understand another person until you step in their shoes and see things from their perspective.

Stickman took some time this week to fluff up his income and Lawrence's income with an infomercial about the farangs who come to Thailand looking for mail order type brides. I think he called this week's column "Lawrence Rehashed" or something like that. This business is a long term sponsor and benefactor to the StickmanBangkok.com web site. The business's name is Thai Professional Introductions.... this is quaint. The "pro" in this case is the customer? Or did I get that wrong? It's the girls? Oh wait a minute -- the service is calling itself the "pro". Ok, got it.

I don't know about you but I keep seeing this "Quid Pro Quo" business arrangement between farangs and Thai females. I personally have nothing against it when the man in it has his eyes open and he is not being mislead by a fellow farang. But, lets call it what it is... this is cleaned and pressed version of the naughty night life. I have seen other similar transactions here and of course all of them seem to involve money.

I notice that Stickman and Lawrence were doing their best to make a clear distinction between these "good" girls and other type. We all know that Stickman doesn't have anything to do with bar girls beyond just investigating them undercover for clients. Stickman is clearly out of the NNL industry (wink wink). His web site abhors the notion that it endorses the partaking of flesh for money... He is just above that now.. he had graduated to far loftier ideals.... (cough cough, gag, gag).

No, that's not what the Thai Professional Introductions is all about either. They represent good girls who are vying for a better opportunity in life. I think there are lots of good girls here. There are also plenty in the US and in Europe.

We have one right now in the UK that is asking for her piece of Sir Paul's billion... That would be Heather Mills. I'm sure she feels very sure she is entitled to a piece of those royalties from "Yesterday".

Yesterday all my trouble seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh I believe in yesterday
Suddenly I'm not half the man I used to be
There's a shadow hanging over me
Oh yesterday game suddenly
Why she had to go I don't know
She wouldn't say
I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday
Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh I believe in yesterday

But, you know I can't say too much about her because she'll probably construe my attempt to criticize her as being connected to her prosthetic leg and would no doubt feel entitled to sue me for targeted insults based on her disability.

Do you know who the good girls are? I'm asking because, frankly I can't tell. I've seen Nana plaza girls cry in private because they really didn't want to be in that scene working but feeling that they had no other choice. And I'm sure we have all seen or heard of the hi-society "sharks" looking to wield their influences to reap financial benefits from soft men. I think the good girls are very hard to spot.

We didn't read about any horror stories from customers of Thai Professional Introduction. Somehow I didn't expect to see any overly negative reports there of bad experiences. Perhaps readers out in the world will contact us and tell us if things went horribly wrong with this service? I think the the Thailand Internet readership would like to hear about the down sides to the game of "Let's make a deal".

If you ask me, money will sour a relationship nearly every time. Money and love is a concoction that ferments in the most peculiar ways.

However, if you have scads of money to spare and you're up on making a paid booty call, then Thailand may also seem to be a bargain for those "decadent" individuals who are look for that oh so something special in the "good girl / I don't know I'm doing yet", package...

The Bottom line; when it comes to making a deal in a land where truth is not king and the law is weak, the order of the day is: "Caveat Emptor"

Looks like the Aussi, Marc Holt is the "DirtyKeith" blogger. Marc is yet again prancing around incognito and borrowing other people's names for cover. He has a tendency to call me "Keithy Weithy" like a grandmother. In his most recent blog posting he is claiming responsibility for a prank. The Stickman Bangkok team last year dropped hints about Stickman being divorced. In reality Mrs. Stick was worried about her job being in jeopardy because she too is an English teacher and she knows that her involvement to the Stickman web site is a risk to her career. So Marc and Paul probably engineered a fake Stickman divorce rumor allowing Mrs Stick to exit the scene for a while. But, hell, these guys are always engineering a ruse. So, what's the big deal? This is old hat to these pranksters. This just goes to show that as a reader -- there are some columns that have some level of integrity and other that do not. By default -- don't trust any of them - including mine!

See the last line in that "Summers Sanities in Vain" entry. They have been saying for a year and a half now that mine time has come... if you keep saying that one of these days it might be true. So, what is it people say about a broken clock? ..... Hum....

Keep it up Marc. I want people to read what you write about me. I want them to sift through your words with masterful "Galt" discernment. This is all good practice.

Just keep on being Stickman's surrogate and showing the readers here in Thailand and abroad that Stickman is unwilling to stand up for himself and answer his own challenges.

I personally took you on when you called me a pedophile last year. I wasn't afraid to speak up and give an answer to your accusations. Shame on you too, because you knew better. You guys (the Stickman Team) researched me from public records in the US, you know my history. You came to my home town and was unsuccessful in digging up dirt on me. My company was real. My legal status intact. You were hell bent on putting the muzzle on me but it didn't work. And then this month I find out that you're the guy who has been calling my cell phone anonymously and hanging up as a prank for about year. I had an idea it was you. What a sad little old man you are. You better be careful. That rat ship whose flag you fly under has a lot of whispering souls and someone is going to sell you out for the fake and cheat that you clearly sometimes are.

By the way people, part of what Marc writes about my column this week in his "DirtyKeith" blog is true. I removed the Banana Girl pictures and the reference to Dr K. (one of Stickman's co-educators). Does anyone want to speculate why I removed those items? Does anyone have an intuitive guess? Am I scared of Clayton Wade's pending law suit? Or is there another reason? Is there a possibly a mystery afoot?

When I first introduced this topic and explained that Clayton Wade of Premiere International was suing me (about 3 or 4 weeks ago), I held back some information. I didn't tell you at that he was also suing David Crudduck of Paragon Executive Search at nearly the same time. That's right. I was not the first target on Claytons list. Mr Cradduck was served with papers first in Clayton's home town of Pattaya.

Just isn't that interesting? Clayton swore in his testimony inside his legal complaint about me that everything that I had written on the web site was a complete lie 100%, yet he had the notion to sue the other party.... Hum.... How would Clayton know to sue David?

If David told me absolutely nothing and I fabricated the entire story, then it would have been obvious that Crudduck couldn't have been involved and Clayton would have had no reason to suspect that Crudduck contacted me at all.

Rather, in this case, Clayton knew for sure Crudduck had communicated to me because obviously elements of the email that I received must have been true or very close to the truth....

I think suing Crudduck, and then claiming that I personally fabricated a story is going to weight against Clayton....

But there is another problem.... A bigger problem for Clayton. He has to show up first. That weasel didn't even have the nerve and the respect for the Thai court system to show up for the hearing that he called against Mr Crudduck on the 23rd of February. Crudduck rebuffed Wade by default.

The word from Mr Crudduck was that Wade's attorney made an attempt to delay the proceedings by several months.... what the joke.

If Clayton can't take the time to show up at a hearing that he asked for in his own home town, what are the chances that he is going to take a flight and show up 500Km in the Northeast and show me down? I would say about .002%. Even if he did, I think we would squash him like a bug (metaphorically of course).

People, it looks as if we won't really get a good test of the law on this law suit. Wining by default doesn't really tell us anything.

The hearing is scheduled to occur fairly soon and I'll have another update for you when that shakes out. My guess is that this is going to be a Clayton Wade no show / cancellation. This might very well be just a simple example of a loud, foul mouthed farang who tries to take advantage of other farangs by intimidation.

Nothing to brag about but we are seeing a steady return to weekly readership. The numbers are still way down from last year at this time.

First, I really wasn't in full on Jack Bauer mode this week and it felt good to relax a bit and offer up some substantial content. Contrary to popular belief, I'm not always uncovering conspiracies, yelling at the top of my lungs, and flushing out the bad guys here on the Internet.

Secondly, I like to make an interesting point about the law. Seems like farang here in Thailand try to use litigation as a means of attack. They conjure up threats of legal action almost as an excuse to not have to work out their differences in other ways. As you know the law is weak here in Thailand. Even the Thais do not depend on it too heavily. Thais seek to work out issues through leverages in other ways. They may call on friends of influence. They may use social pressure to restore order in a matter. They will also call police in to referee a decision in a dispute - that is common, but I don't see them instinctively going to a full on court based legal remedy.

But we farangs jump to calling out our lawyers and this is especially laughable in Thailand as quite frankly -- in my mind -- the law here is not for use to non-citizens. I wouldn't necessarily get overly confident that as an outsider that any court is going to go the distance to protect your non-existent rights. Thailand's laws are for the natives -- pure and simple. And if you really want to make progress in a dispute, it would probably be best for you seek out more naturally accepted means of remedy like the ones mentioned above. In a real dispute, more often than not -- if you have money out of pocket -- you're more likely to loose it than getting it back. That is how it goes here... so that should put you on high alert about plunking down any cash on any deals here in Thailand. My advice is that you need to really have a plan to keep your investments under control outside of the need for the legal system's enforcement of your deal.

One last thing that I want to say is -- our new friends at the NKP International Aviation College have brought something very valuable to our area. I think we should be thankful to Khun Chawalit and other parties were where successful in making this program possible. I think they have selected a fine principle for the school who seems to know what he is doing. All the elements are there for success and if they follow their plan and work hard I think this school will do very will for the local community.

I also want to point out that for the first time perhaps in the history of this area, we can begin to save more lives. This is a service that perhaps was not thought about prior to the planning of this school. Accidents happen that are extremely tragic. Little girls accidentally get burned or children playing around dangerous equipment severely hurt themselves. For the first time ever, we now have a choice to expediently fly these patients to nearby larger hospitals in Mukdahon, Udon Thani or Khon Khen where better facilities are available to help them. What a great opportunity to do something very important for someone who really needs the help. And for what little we have here, the people just across the river in TaKhet, Laos have even less. (I have already seen ambulances cross the river by ferry bringing someone who is ill from Laos to our local hospital)

If Khun Chawalit took seriously ill, would they shuttle him out? -- I think it's safe to say that they would. He is a pretty important person for the area. If a young child had their hand accidentally severed, would they want to air lift them for help - certainly we all would want to. The question is, will this become a possible offering? Perhaps so if there was a way to finance it. This would be a great way make a significant donation to the community. I hope unfortunate incidences like this don't happen, but luckily we may now have an extra edge in countering these tragic circumstances.