by Cassandra Isackson
Director, Minnesota DOT Office of Aeronautics
The warmth of spring has finally arrived after what seemed to be a very long winter. But your Minnesota DOT Office of Aeronautics has been very busy despite the lingering cold and snow as we participated in a number of great conferences and aviation events statewide.
March was packed full of aviation conferences and events. We started with the Minnesota Aviation Art Contest Ceremony on March 14, 2014. It was hosted by the Army National Guard Aviation Battalion in St. Paul, along with the outstanding support of Life Link III Air Ambulance Service, the Minnesota State Patrol, Minnesota Civil Air Patrol personnel from the St. Paul Squadron and CAP Wing Headquarters, and Joe Harris of the Metropolitan Airports Commission. The ceremony was co-sponsored by Blick Art Materials of Roseville. Twelve young aviation artists were recognized for their amazing talents in art, and toured three helicopters brought in specifically for the event’s award winners and participants. This year’s contest theme was “Flying Save Lives.”
Next, there was the “Minnesota Aviation Trades Conference” in Bloomington, sponsored by the Minnesota Aviation Trades Association (MATA) on March 21, 2014, as well as the “Minnesota Pilots Association Conference,” March 21-22 at the Golden Wings Museum at Anoka County-Blaine Airport in Blaine.
The “Aviation Maintenance Conference” was held March 24-25 at the Earle Brown Heritage Center in Brooklyn Center, and the “Minnesota Airports Conference” was held April 16-18 at the Sanford Center in Bemidji.
Rounding out April, I spoke at the annual Minnesota Wing of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) Conference at Breezy Point, Minnesota, April 25-27.
May started with the Minnesota Seaplane Pilots Association Safety Seminar & Fly-In, May 2-3.
As you can see, we are striving to meet as many people in the Minnesota aviation family as we can, and to help spread the word about exciting and educational aviation events around our state. We want to hear your thoughts; your ideas; your concerns. We want to listen to you, our customers, and work with you to help assure we are providing you with the best services and products we can, in a fiscally intelligent and responsible manner.
We encourage you to notify us of your aviation events. We will be happy to list that information on our events web page to help promote your event and aviation in general.
Together, we can make that a consistent and very productive reality.
