Go Lean Commentary
The airplane is not a new invention. It goes back to the days of the Wright Brothers of Dayton, Ohio – Orville and Wilbur – and their Kitty Hawk, North Carolina test flight on December 17, 1903. Yet, after 112 years, there is still room for a lot of invention and innovation in the field of aerospace. As the old adage relates “Necessity, is the ‘mother’ of invention”.
This commentary asserts that while the United States of America was front-and-center with the initial developments in man-flights, the Caribbean region now needs to be more prominent with the innovations of flight for this new century in aviation. Why?
Necessity, is STILL the ‘mother’ of invention.
There is the need for a lot more innovative airplane transportation solutions for any region featuring an archipelago – a chain of islands. This new product here – the ICON A5* – is perhaps an ideal solution for Caribbean deployment, as it can better reach the masses and become ubiquitous for private owners-operators; see the following VIDEO:
VIDEO Title: Private airplanes for all? One company hopes so
Private planes have long been the domain of the very rich, but now one company wants to change that. ICON wants to do for air travel what Apple did for computers – demystify and make them approachable. They see a future where lots of people like me and you are soaring through the sky in a plane like this. TODAY’s Craig Melvin reports.
This vision of ubiquitous owners-operators of amphibious airplanes – that can touchdown on land or water – portray a more efficient aviation environment for island-hoping; these vehicles would make island living more appealing to live, work and play. This commentary asserted that “our region must participate in these developments, not just spectate on them”. This aligns with the mandate for a more nimble environment to develop, test and deploy cutting-edge transportation solutions. This is the benefit of lean governmental coordination, to be able to launch initiatives like this as portrayed in the foregoing VIDEO.
Canada is a good model for the Caribbean to emulate in this regards. They have vast rural territories, not easily accessible by roads. In these far-out territories, seaplanes, floatplanes and bush planes proliferate. In addition, this ubiquity in Canada is not necessarily affiliated with the wealthy, but rather ordinary citizens; sometimes, these transportation options even become a small business opportunity.
Needless to say, a proliferation of small aircrafts raises a lot of security issues; think September 11, 2011 Terror Attacks on New York City. The aircraft in the above VIDEO, also feature the additional safety mitigation of a built-in parachute, to allow for an easy landing of any aircraft that may go into distress. (This safety feature is ingenious!).
The book, Go Lean … Caribbean, extols the principle that R&D (research and development) activities are necessary to profit from advantages in technology. We want to do R&D here in the Caribbean; manufacturing/assembly too. Since we have the demand; we should facilitate supply as well! This is a mandate for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the CU. This technocracy will assume oversight to optimize the region in the areas of:
- (1) economics
- (2) security
- (3) lean government
This ethos of adapting to change has now come to the Caribbean.
The status quo of the Caribbean’s transportation eco-systems is badly flawed. The region boasts transportation and fuel costs (including taxes) that are among the highest in the world.
The Go Lean strategy is to confederate the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region to form the technocratic CU Trade Federation. Tactically, the roadmap calls for a separation-of-powers, allowing the Caribbean member-states to deputize authority of the Caribbean airspace to the one unified CU agency. Operationally, there is the need to regulate these aircrafts and the owners-operators, for their monitoring, training, licensing, maintenance compliance, search-and-rescue, incident management and everyday functionality. (Consider the risk mitigation example in the Appendix VIDEO below).
Things will go wrong! Bad things do happen to good people.
This blog-commentary touches on many related issues and subjects that affect planning for Caribbean empowerment in the aviation and transportation industry-spaces. Many of these issues were elaborated upon in these previous blog-commentaries:
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5376 | Drones to be used for Insurance Damage Claims |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3533 | No Fear of Failure – Case Study: Bahamasair |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3326 | M-1 Rail: Alternative Motion in the Motor City |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3225 | Caribbean less competitive due to increasing aviation taxes |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2769 | DC Streetcars/Rail – Model For Caribbean Re-development |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=798 | Lessons Learned from the American Airlines merger |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=673 | Ghost ships – Autonomous cargo vessels without a crew |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=254 | Air Antilles Launches St. Maarten Service |
Though not written with this particular initiative in mind, the Go Lean roadmap anticipates the foregoing VIDEO‘s opportunities and challenges, as pronounced in the Declaration of Interdependence, (Pages 12 & 14):
xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.
xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.
xxx. Whereas the effects of globalization can be felt in every aspect of Caribbean life, from the acquisition of food and clothing, to the ubiquity of ICT, the region cannot only consume, it is imperative that our lands also produce and add to the international community, even if doing so requires some sacrifice and subsidy.
The Go Lean book was written with the future of the Caribbean in mind. There was a certain anticipated future – with a proliferation of private aircraft owners-operators – that hasn’t really materialized … yet. But maybe now, finally, that future view is coming into focus. This is the direct quotation from the book (Page 26):
The Bottom Line on the Millennium
In the words of Yogi Berra – iconic American Baseball Hall-of-Famer: “The future ain’t what it used to be”.This is according to a 2007 news analysis by Michael Fitzpatrick, Science Writer for The Guardian (UK) newspaper:
No flying cars, no dinners in a pill, and certainly no cool rocketing off to space cities in the required outfit of the future. We seem to have failed the expectations of the most wild-eyed seers from the past – futurologists who were for the most part in love with a supercharged, technologically sexy future where science would free us from the daily grind, for holidays on the moon or underseas. But here we remain, plodding along … in a familiar world that is neither utopia nor dystopia. What the futurologists did get right were some of the more prosaic details such as mobile phones and digital technologies.
The aircraft depicted in the foregoing VIDEO (see Appendix below), feature functionality where every single-family home could have a plane in their garage – this is the ubiquity in the earlier references. North American society could now be that close to this future view. Better still, the Caribbean should be that close to this reality:
… planes being towed from home garages to boat ramps to launch flight. Then while in flight the aircraft cruises below 15,000 feet and operate at good speed, but slower than 150 miles an hour.
The CU mission is to implement the complete eco-system to deliver on market opportunities for these ubiquitous aircraft owners-operators. There are many strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies in the book that will facilitate this readiness; a sample is detailed here:
| Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices | Page 21 |
| Economic Principles – People Choose because Resources are Limited | Page 21 |
| Economic Principles – All Choices Involve Costs | Page 21 |
| Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives | Page 21 |
| Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices | Page 21 |
| Economic Principles – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future | Page 21 |
| Community Ethos – Money Multiplier | Page 22 |
| Community Ethos – Job Multiplier | Page 22 |
| Community Ethos – Lean Operations | Page 24 |
| Community Ethos – Return on Investments | Page 24 |
| Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future | Page 26 |
| Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship | Page 28 |
| Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property | Page 29 |
| Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research and Development | Page 30 |
| Community Ethos – Ways to Ways to Improve Negotiations | Page 32 |
| Tactical – Separation of Powers – Emergency Management | Page 76 |
| Tactical – Separation of Powers – Department of Transportation – Aviation Regulator | Page 84 |
| Implementation – Security Initiatives at Start-up – Command-and-Control | Page 103 |
| Implementation – Start-up Benefits from the EEZ | Page 104 |
| Implementation – Steps to Implement Self-Governing Entities | Page 105 |
| Implementation – Ways to Improve Energy Usage – Electrified Buses/Trains | Page 113 |
| Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization | Page 119 |
| Planning – Ways to Improve Trade | Page 128 |
| Planning – Lessons Learned from Canada’s History | Page 146 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy | Page 151 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs | Page 152 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance | Page 168 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract – Technology and Efficiency | Page 170 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Foster Empowering Immigration | Page 174 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security | Page 180 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism | Page 181 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology | Page 197 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Improve Transportation | Page 205 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Impact Urban Living – Transit Options | Page 234 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Impact Rural Living – Optimizing Transportation Options | Page 235 |
As described in the Go Lean book, change is imminent, for the world and for the Caribbean. The world is preparing for the change for more efficient transit options and also to deploy more autonomous systems to help owner-operators auto-pilot and navigate around the Caribbean region. This commentary calls for a new ethos … to prepare for change. This ethos has now come to the Caribbean, among the Go Lean/CU planners. The people of the region are urged to also “lean-in” to this empowerment. The benefits of this roadmap are very alluring: emergence of an $800 Billion single market economy and 2.2 million new jobs.
These developments are taking place … elsewhere. We need “in” on this.
We need this here, these types of innovative products, systems, companies and specialists to help us in our quest to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂
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Appendix * ICON A5
ICON Aircraft is a privately held American aircraft design and production company.[2] It is currently working on the production of the ICON A5, an amphibious light sport aircraft[3] that began customer deliveries in July 2015.[4][5] The company was founded in response to the 2004 Federal Aviation Administration establishment of the light-sport aircraft (LSA) class of aircraft and Sport Pilot certificate class of pilot.[6][7][8]
This first ICON Aircraft’s model, the ICON A5, is an amphibious two-seat, light-sport aircraft to be priced at approximately $189,000. Its folding wings facilitate transportation and storage,[8] and it will have a range of approximately 300 nautical miles (560 km) and a top speed of 105 knots (120 mph).[18]
ICON Aircraft positions the A5 with a recreational focus, stating that the aircraft competes with powersports vehicles such as ATVs, motorcycles, watercraft, and snowmobiles, rather than other airplanes.
The company’s headquarters are located in Vacaville, California where all manufacturing, engineering, design, training, sales, and service functions are consolidated.[21]
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICON_Aircraft; retrieved September 21, 2015.
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Appendix – VIDEO – Sea Plane Takes Off from Truck Trailer – https://youtu.be/-JDogTLtels
Title: Creative Sea Plane Pilot Displays Incredible Take Off Technique From a Moving Truck Trailer – Published on May 8, 2013 – For licensing/usage please contact: licensing@liveleak.com.
Though not as widely used as they once were, seaplanes still serve a few key purposes today including providing access to roadless areas. But the downside of a seaplane is that it can’t land or take off on solid ground. Or can it? This video proves that only one of those disadvantages holds true (landing). As you will see in the video, with a truck moving fast enough, a seaplane can actually take off from an attached trailer.