Linked In:The retail reaper comes for Kmart

Although the end has essentially been there for a while, the demise of the once mighty K-Mart ends another chapter in the corporate history of Detroit, especially with retail establishments.  While the Big 3 automakers continue to be the most notable brand names coming out of Detroit, the list of former companies from the Motor City is long, some still exist in a non-Detroit oriented form (Motown Records, Comerica Bank, Sanders Chocolates), some have rebranded (Ally Financial, former GMAC) but many are gone.  Hudson’s, National Bank of Detroit, American Motors (but the Pacer lives on with Wayne and Garth!), Harmony House, Jacobson’s and Stroh Brewery Company are just some of the names you think of when strolling down memory lane of Detroit Companies. 

While the Big 3 still exist, along with stalwarts like Faygo, a lot has disappeared over the years although new companies like Rocket Mortgage and others have entered the marketplace.  Change is always constant but disappearance of so many companies leave some nostalgia for those of us growing up in the city in 1970s and 1980s and fondly remember the K-Mart “Blue Light Specials” in the days before Amazon and Walmart.

The End of the Line...Definitely

Once again, it's hard to believe my last post was in early November, prior to the election.  Quite a bit has happened since the election and it did prove to be the end of the line for the Trump Administration.  The election results were disturbingly closer than I expected, but thankfully a few states came through to turn the tide for President Biden.  Although not particularly shocking, my home state of Florida did go for Trump and I was disappointed that it wasn't even close yet also not shocked given the number of Trump signs I saw prior to Election Day.

Needless to say, the displays after the election were terrible.  The challenging of the Electoral College by sitting Members of Congress was a massive disappointment and continued to back up my feelings of disgust for our sitting lawmakers, both Democrat and Republican.  And then the rampage on the Capitol was something that I could not even imagine happening during my time working as a lobbyist.  I've stood near the spot where the woman was shot.  The fact that a sitting President encouraged this mob is the cherry on the sundae of the past four years as our society continues to disintegrate into something that I find to be unimaginable.  And yet we saw the birth of some of this with Bush v. Gore in 2000 and the first time we heard the term "Red State/Blue State" and what they represented.

I wish Presdient Biden well although I remain concerned that he is already governing far more to the left than I would like.  We'll see how that works out.  Amazingly, while the Mainstream Media predicted massive Republican defeats, the GOP actually gained several seats in the House and might have held onto the two Georgia seats if the activities of January 6, and how President Trump responded, had not taken place.  To me it shows the real will of many, disgust with Trump but not endorsing a massive Progressive change in our governing.  Will Democrats overreach?  It's pretty likely they will.  Will the voters punish them in 2022 like they did to President Obama in 2010?  Quite possibly.  We'll just have to see how it plays out.

The End of the Line...Maybe?

Here we go...this is being written the Monday before Election Day and the Hat Trick's ballot has been cast and, according to the Supervisor of Elections, counted.  They count early ballots in Florida which is why they sometimes can make a prediction although I don't expect that this year.  Based on polling it's going to be close and voters will need to look at both Florida and Pennsylvania to see if President Trump has a realistic chance at re-election.  As Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight site noted, it is possible for the President to be re-elected through the Electoral College, similar to 2016, and polls have closed in key states recently.  And it's important to note that Silver's site leans left so it is important to take that information in when evaluating their data, much like readers everywhere should do when evaluating information...what is the source? Is it credible? 

Needless to say there is a lot at stake in the 2020 election, as if 2020 hasn't been a fairly full year already.  My opinion of Donald Trump remains the same as it was in 2016, another year when I didn't vote for him. I don't agree with former Vice President Biden on a lot of policy issues but the last four years have shown how completely unfit he is for this office.  It's time for him to go.

Trouble Ahead...

If I'm the Trump Campaign team (and the Hat Trick actually knows one of them from my days as a DC lobbyist...) this can't be good, even if it's June.  As this NPR story shows, Ohio and Florida as "Toss-Ups" and Texas "Leaning Republican" tells you all you need to know.

Lots can happen and the theme of 2020 seems to be whenever something really crazy happens, 2020 says "hold my beer"...but Texas has been an especially solid Republican state having last voted for the Democratic nominee in 1976.  Florida is more of an outlier, sometimes going Republican (1980, 1984, 1988, 1992) and sometimes going Democratic (1996, 2008, 2012) and sometimes having a major identity complex (2000!).  Ohio has also been more changeable, going Republican in years when a Reagan or Bush was the Republican nominee, Democratic in the rest until 2016 when it went for Trump.  President Trump also won Florida in 2016 and absolutely needs to win the state (as well as Ohio) to win re-election in 2020.  Again, the electoral environment can change (look at Hillary Clinton's polls in June of 2016) but the current polling in these three states do not express confidence in the re-election chances of President Trump.

Changes...

This photo to the right was taken last week at 5:00pm EDT from the airport where I work.  It's not a huge facility, but it has a respectable amount of traffic in normal times, and experienced some significant growth this past year with the entry of air carriers such as Frontier and Allegiant.  March, the height of "Season" in Florida (October/November - late April when all the Snowbirds come to visit) saw a booming business by all airlines that suddenly came crashing down with the entry of Coronavirus and its seriousness.  5:00pm never looked this back in March but this was the site last week...not one passenger visible and none of the ticket counters manned.  The last departure of the day had been at 3:30pm, and two flights would be arriving in the late evening. Needless to say, times have changed and it's going to be a long time before my airport sees anything like it saw this past winter.

Airlines of the (Somewhat Recent) Past

As I posted earlier, I've begun the process of focusing more on aviation and aviation history and less on current political discourse in this country.  I spent some time last week taking an "aviation deep dive" into my aviation photos and found this one from 2009:

US Airways A-319 taxing into poisiton

This photo shows a US Airways Airbus A-319 about to depart Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Northern Virginia.  This photo was likely shot at in the spring or early summer at dusk from Gravelly Point, a park and plane spotters paradise located at the end of the runway of National Airport. The Hat Trick spent many fond afternoons and evenings plane spotting in this very location and it's one of the few things I miss about Washington, DC!

US Airways was the major carrier at National Airport throughout the '80s and '90s and, at one point, had its corporate headquarters across the street from the airport in Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia.  Prior to 1997 US Airways was known as US Air and, previous to 1979, the airline was known as Allegheny Airlines but changed to US Air following passage of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978.  By the time this photo was taken in 2009, US Airways had combined with several other airlines to create the current company having absorbed Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) and Piedmont Airlines in 1987 and 1989, respectively. Following two trips to Chapter 11 bankruptcy, US Airways itself was merged into America West Airlines in 2005 with America West Airlines as the surviving corporate entity but adopting the more national-oriented name of US Airways.  The combined airline maintained hubs at Philadelphia (PHL), Charlotte (CLT) and Phoenix (PHX) with a large focus operation at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA).  The end of US Airways finally arrived in 2015 following consolidation of the Big Six carriers (American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United and US Airways) into three mega-carriers - American (combined with US Airways), Delta (combined with Northwest) and United (combined with Continental).  The US Airways/American merger was the final one of the Big Three to take place with the management of US Airways taking the leadership positions in the new company, but keeping the American name and corporate headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas.

The final flight of US Airways took place on October 17, 2015 and with the end of that flight a storied, if not complicated (who can forget Metrojet?), chapter in aviation history came to an end..

A New World

Yesterday the Hat Trick began a 30-day voluntary furlough as part of the flight reductions all airlines are experiencing.  It was the right thing to do as the kids definitely need a little more support as they finish their schools years online.  Mrs. East Coast Wing continues to work from home and she was having to manage both schoolwork and her own work.  My station has seen some tremendous cuts since March, some seasonal and expected, but others a direct result of the Coronavirus pandemic.  Beginning yesterday we are now down to one flight a day, after having a high of 11 flights a day in mid-March.  Ironically we've gone from not having quite enough staff and struggling to having way too many staff onsite for the one flight.  So I'll take a month off and see where we are in June.  The break will be good after a very busy winter and spring that then crashed into stress and anxiety due to the Coronavirus and going to work each day with these new stressors.

With this 30-day furlough I'm going to try and use this opportunity to write more, both on this blog and in other projects I have worked on, with fairly unimpressive progress, over the past few years.  I'm also going to use this opportunity to change the focus a little bit on the Hat Trick.  This blog was created many years ago to talk about three different subjects:  Hockey, Politics and Travel and those were subjects I really enjoyed discussing.  I still love to talk about travel and my professional life has gravitated towards that love by my employment with a major U.S. airline working in operations at a small station.  I've gone from being a Brooks Brother wearing lobbyist to a regular guy on the ramp, loading and unloading bags, marshaling aircraft in and even performing the pushback of aircraft at departure.  It's a huge change and I do like it most days, even the rough ones.  However, the political world has changed a lot and I'm growing more and more weary of it and I just can't stomach discussing the antics of the current occupant of the White House.  And since the NHL season is on hiatus due to Coronavirus it looks like I will just be covering aviation, focus on happier times in aviation and not the current crisis we are experiencing. More old photos, videos and old memories will be covered here, plus an increase in out to Twitter.  Hopefully it will be a positive occurrence in these dark times.