Bessie Coleman

Bessie Coleman was the first African American of either gender, and the first black woman in the world to get her pilot license in 1922, however American aviation schools denied her entry. Not letting that stop her, she taught herself French and moved to France, earning her license from France’s well-known Caudron Brother’s School of Aviation in only seven months. In the same year that she earned her license she became the first African American woman in American to make a public flight. She specialized in stunt flying and parachuting and when she moved back to America made her living by barnstorming and performing aerial tricks. Her interest in aviation was sparked by the stories she read and listened to as a kid of the World War 1 pilots. She hoped to one day open her own school to teach African Americans to fly, but was tragically killed at only 34 years old when an accident during a rehearsal for an aerial show sent her plummeting to her death. However, she still remains a pioneer to women in aviation.

Players: The biggest player here is Southwest Airlines. They have the highest interest in how customers see them and have the highest power in portraying themselves on social media. They used humor in hopes of drawing other social media users in to help share their message to new potential customers.

Context Setters: The context setters would be other social media and twitter users. They have the power to like and share the tweet so they have high power, but unless they are super dedicated customers they probably don’t have that high of an interest. Because the tweet uses humor they might be more likely to retweet and spread the message.

Subjects:The subjects would be Southwest customers and other airlines. Customers would see an ad for a sale like this that uses humor and might be more willing to check it out. They might have a higher interest towards the tweet because they are already a customer and a sale could mean that they might want to buy a ticket while the sale is still happening, but they don’t have the power to affect the sale. Other airlines might be interested to see the Southwest advertising methods and to see if it is successful but had no power to change Southwest’s tweets.

Crowd: The crowd is non-customers on social media who just happen to see the tweet. They don’t have an interest because they don’t use Southwest, and they don’t have power because they are not sharing the tweet and have no affect on the tweet itself.

Every year my aunt rents a house on the ocean in Topsail Island, North Carolina for two weeks in the summer. My mom likes to take us down there for a week or so since it is one of the only times in the year she can see her sister and it is a cheap vacation for my family since my aunt often refuses to let my mom help pay. One year stands out in my mind because the week after we went straight down to Florida to visit Disney World and Universal Studios. I think I was in middle school still and I was really excited the weeks coming up to the vacation. We drove from Minnesota to North Carolina, which is about a 13 hour drive. We hadn’t been able to come out the year before so it had been a while since we had seen my cousins and I remember being so excited to hang out with them. They were all a couple years older and I remember thinking I was so cool for getting to hang out with them and that they seemed to enjoy the company of my younger siblings and I. We got to spend a week just goofing off on the beach with my cousins which was a ton of fun. This vacation always sticks out to me because usually my dad likes to plan vacations where we have an agenda of things to do, and events to go see and there is never time to just sit and relax, which I believe is the mark of a true vacation. To be able to just spend a week swimming and lounging on a beach was heaven. Of course the next week, when we went to Disney/Universal, my dad had his list of things we had to go see. It was still a lot of fun though, and we went right as the new Harry Potter world was opening. My brother and I were huge Harry Potter fans and I remember getting a wand and using it at certain places around the park that were rigged so it looked like you were actually using magic. The lines for everything were super long but we pretty much just goofed off the entire time and so waiting wasn’t so bad. I had just discovered that I liked roller coasters and so my brother and I tried to go on every ride at least twice. I usually hang out with my sister, so being able to hang out with my brother for most of the week was fun and we got to bond over Harry Potter and rides, since my sister wasn’t that into it. The whole vacation was so much fun I didn’t even mind the 22 hour ride home. Although I think we might have stopped somewhere in Tennessee for the night. I think the reason this vacation was so fun and exciting is because it was different from what we normally do. My parents are big outdoorsy people and so usually our vacations are spent in a tent camping somewhere. I like to camp but it was nice to do something different, like stay in a resort amusement park or just lounge around on a beach for a week. It was definitely one of my favorite vacations

NATS Using AI At Heathrow To Combat Visibility Issues

The UK air traffic management company, NATS, is currently trying out AI technology at London’s Heathrow Airport in hopes to help and improve the airport’s landing capacity during times of low visibility. The experiment is using high definition cameras and AI technology to help communicate to the tower whether or not arriving aircraft have left the runway. In times of low visibility it is often hard for the tower to see the runways, as it is 285 ft in the air. The hope is that this new technology will be able to tell the tower whether or not the runway is clear so that the tower does not have to rely on ground radar, which can take a long time and decreases landing capacity by as much as 20 percent on low visibility days, which can create passenger delays and disruption of aircraft movements.

In todays day and age of technology, we have come to rely on technology based communication now more than ever. Usually this technology is between two humans who are using technology such as cell phones or computers to communicate back and forth. In this article, we are taking this one step further by having people communicate directly to the technology and vice versa. The cameras are monitored by AI technology that reports back to the command tower so that the tower can make the decision needed to move planes around. The tower and the AI technology are communicating back and forth so that safe decisions can be made faster than they would be without it. This is an important step in advancing the way the aviation industry uses technology to communicate, and if this trial is successful, this communication will be important to help the airport get flights in and out on time.

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When I first started looking at colleges I had no idea what I wanted to major in. I knew I wanted to fly but my parents weren’t as onboard because my uncle was a pilot and he struggled after 9/11 and then the 2008 recession and they didn’t want me to follow the same path. Because of this I didn’t look at very many schools with aviation programs. When I looked at OSU I noticed their Aviation Business major and that kind of piqued my interest, and my parents were more ok with that because I would have that background in business as a backup plan in case flying didn’t work out. I came to OSU my freshman year as an undeclared major and took the intro to aviation course and some business courses to see if that was what I really wanted to do. I loved the intro to aviation course and was less thrilled about the core business courses, and after talking to some people I figured that majoring in Aviation Management isn’t what I really wanted to do, so I finally declared myself as an Air Transportation major with the pilot track at the end of freshman year. I plan on minoring in something other than aviation so that I do have that backup plan in case something were to happen in the industry that would prevent me from finding a job, I just haven’t decided what I want to minor in yet.

As of right now the goal is to become an airline pilot after I graduate. I don’t have a specific airline in mind yet and I guess I’d be pretty willing take any job that is available and offered to me. I am not 100% set on the airlines however and if another opportunity came up I would be willing to consider deviating from that plan. I do know that I would like to fly after graduation though and hope that I can do that, although I wouldn’t mind a more administrative job in the aviation industry, as long as it still gave me the opportunity to occasionally fly.