Trans Air obtained ten brand new Spanish Casa turbo-props from G.E. Leasing on very good terms. The government of Spain, as part owner of Casa, was subsidizing it’s Aviation Industry. To create an entrée into the American market for these aircraft, we were being allowed to use them free of charge for the first twelve months (including a free half-million dollars of parts inventory), with the first note payment not due for one year. Meanwhile, the Bent brothers, owners of Trans Air, were collecting the revenue from the use of these new planes.
Stigo and I agreed that we could predict when Trans Air would go out of business. Although the other guys didn’t believe us, we figured that the Bents would disappear exactly one year from the date that the lease was signed, when the first note payment would come due. Unfortunately, as the date approached, bills started not getting paid, and our paychecks were late.
Over the loud speaker, I heard my flight being cancelled by the Piedmont Station Manager in Tallahassee. After he had taken care of the passengers, I asked him what had become of my flight? “Go look at your plane, out on the ramp,” was his response. Walking out onto the ramp, I saw a Sheriff’s car parked in front of my plane, and an airport van blocking it’s rear. The Airport Manager and a Sheriff are taping a document across the door of the aircraft. Getting a closer look, I discover it is a lien notice “…non-payment of fuel, non-payment of landing fees…”
“Hey, guys, can I get my underwear off this plane?” I ask. Smiling, they allow me to get my personal gear off.
A few times we pilots would show up at Fort Lauderdale to start our flying, and our airplane would be missing. The banks, we discovered, would send repo pilots in at 2 A.M., to fly these planes away.
Trans Air’s death spiral continued until finally, the only flying left was from Ft. Lauderdale to the Islands and back. This required that Kerry Cinder, myself and a pilot buddy of his from the Navy, had to drive down from Jacksonville, to pick up our flights.
One dark night, in the truck with Kerry and his friend, they ask me how old I think the Earth is? Something tells me that this question is not lightly asked. “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it much, but I guess it’s about four, maybe five billion years old, what with Carbon dating and such.”
“Carbon dating is a fraud,” they explode together! “The Earth is only 4,772 years old,” Kerry insists!
Seems that they both go to the same church in Orange Park, a bedroom community serving the large naval aviation community of Jacksonville. Anyway, their church (I never did ask which one it was) teaches that the Bible is to be taken literally. That if one were to add up all the begats and such, and they’ve certainly done just that, the age of the world would be 4,772 years old.
Sitting between these two modern men, men of computers, men who’ve flown the most advanced, sophisticated aircraft in the Military world, I am trying to decide whether I am being put on. I am not. Kerry “El Cind” Cinder, and his buddy, genuinely believe Carbon dating to be a fraud, they and their wives and friends are raising their children to believe that the world is less than five thousand-years-old, and I am now feeling a Pariah….not an overt Pariah, mind you, they are too polite for that, but things were never quite the same after that.
The trip to Ft. Lauderdale was about four hours long. After pulling into the first fuel stop, I voluntarily moved to the bed of the pick-up truck where I sat for the remainder of the trip.
Kerry was recalled by Pan Am from which he had been furloughed years earlier. I heard, years later, after the demise of Pan Am, that Kerry was working for Delta Airlines.
I don’t know whether Kerry Cinder still believes that the Earth is only 5,000 years-old. But if you do Kerry, I ask you now, what difference does it make? The only possible difference it can make, for you and your fellow congregants, is in trying to convince yourselves that (mathematically speaking) your personal interpretation of the bible is correct…so, my advice to you is, watch out for Janet Reno!