Without bringing in politics or my personal feelings about the new Rep Governor in Florida (Rick Scott), here's a story about him wanting to use his own plane for travel, and about unloading the King Air the state owns and the Citation that it leases.

http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/avflash/1811-full.html#203918

Didn't Charlie Crist already axe the King Airs?

We still have the (owned) King Air and the (leased) Citation.

Maybe he will run for President and than we can get rid of two 747's!

Just keep the real 'doomsday plane' (the pale grey one) and sell the whole clown-show to the Saudis.

My feelings are that the President's security isn't worth risking to save money. Having two 747's is just nessary to keep him safe. Like him or not he is still the leader of the free world and our Commander in Cheif of our military so tax dollars well spent.

Now on a local and state level I agree with Scott. They can drive.

Leo,
Actually, Gov. Rick Scott isn't planning on driving. Rather, he's said he will simply use his own plane for his travel. And, he's making it available (by "reservation") for other FL politicians.

Remember, Rick has gazillions of $$.

We'll see how this actually works out...

It works for him, he can write the time off.



And yeah, he made a ton scamming the medicare system

Yeah.

But he never admitted to any of it. You know, that 5th Amendment thing...

Still beats our other choices.

Interesting letter on AvWeb today re this topic:

As a former pilot for a state government, I can imagine some of the "hidden" features of an offer by the governor of Florida, based upon what occurred when our former governor of pulled the same stunt.

First, it made good political spin because the citizens imagined taxpayers would no longer have to support such a "luxury" [as] providing jet airplanes for politicians.

But the reality is the state took a huge loss on the sale at a time of economic downtime. But here's the rest of the story: The pilots formerly on the governor's personal payroll came onto the state payroll — with benefits, of course. And the maintenance of the governor's personal airplane became the responsibility of the state.

What appears to be a common sense approach and gift of personal assets by the governor is actually a method of handing taxpayer money to brokerage friends and billing the taxpayers for personal airplane expenses, foisting personal employee salary/benefits onto the public, and then getting the public to refurbish a personal airplane the politician then takes back!

What a deal!