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by H.G. Frautschy How many of us grumble when we have to dri ve an hour or so to our airport, just to fly our beloved airplane? If you live in a major metropolitan area, you may have to drive even further, and it can be frustrating. But what if you had to go to the international airport first, keep your fingers crossed that there is room on the next plane, hop a ride on that jet across the Atlantic to Houston, Texas, get to your friend's house, work your way out to the local airport, and then, after all that, spend only a day or two flying your pretty Boeing Stearman PT-17 before you have to do it all in reverse again, so you can go back to work! Now that's dedication! But for Heinrich Fila, a Captain of the Mc Donnell Douglas MD-80 for Austrian Airlines, that's exactly how he gets to fly his Stearman. I ran across Heinrich and his en thusiastic crew at EAA Oshkosh '91 while they were busy polishing his white and yellow biplane. They were busy enjoying one of the joys of owner ship by cleaning the little bits of oil, 12 OCTOBER 1991
grass and bugs from the windshield and leading edges of the wings. A little polish here and a lot of rubbing there and the wings glistened in the midday sun. All of the crew consisted of friends of Heinrich's from Austrian Airlines,
Heinrich Fila applies a IiHie elbow grease to the cleaning of his Stearman .
who had flown over to enjoy EAA Osh kosh . Pilots Dietmar Gross, Martin Fickl and Richard Linsberger were complemented by the the presence of Flight Attendants Monja Hassan and Susanne Niedermeyer. They all chipped in to keep Heinrich's pride and joy bright and shiny. But why would anybody want to have to go through this to fly a Stearman, or any other light airplane? They have light aircraft in Austria, right? As Hein rich explained, flight in Europe is quite different than it is here in this part of the world, even during his commercial job. As he talked, it was interesting to hear someone discuss a system of air travel that was more restrictive and apparently less friendly than the North American ATC system. "Everybody is nice here; every ATC controller is nice here. This is much different than the ATC control lers in Europe. Here they are very happy to help - they are friendly and they like you, and that's what I like here." That certainly caught my attention.