Guest blogger - meet Jason Duffy

August 13th, 2008 at 09:15am Thomas V. Bona

Jason Duffy, better known to Passenger Seat faithful as ANCJason, has been the most prolific commenter since this blog started. Because of his interest and insight, and because he’s moving to Rockford next year, I asked him to be our first-ever guest blogger. He’ll post a few items in the coming weeks.

Jason is a native of McHenry, and has family members that have lived in the Rockford-Belvidere area. He’s also lived in Lake Geneva, Wisc., and California. He’s a student at University of Alaska Anchorage (hence the ANC) studying aviation.

It’s a real privilege to be a guest blogger. I have only been a participant of Thomas Bona’s blog for a short time, and I have enjoyed his insight into the industry and its local/regional applications immensely.

My name is Jason Duffy, and I am two calculus classes and a physics class away from receiving an AAS in Aviation Administration and a BS in Aviation Technology – Management from the University of Alaska Anchorage. I am married and have a perpetually energetic 19-month old son who is vaguely aware that he has a sibling arriving next March. I presently work as an Operations Intern at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. Since graduating high school, I have about six years of occupational experience in the aviation industry. Working at the airport, coupled with regular visits to the forums on airliners.net has enabled me to learn quite a bit about the airline industry as a whole.

I have been interested in aviation since the age of five. I can remember going to O’Hare to pick up relatives flying in, and my father and I would debate on whether the plane that had just flown overhead on final approach was a DC-10 or an L1011 (to this day I’m sure that I was right). I can also remember visiting my grandparents who lived just off of Harrison Avenue, and hearing the prop planes fly overhead. My grandmother always kept up with what was going on at the airport, and she used to tell me what airlines flew to Rockford, such as Mississippi Valley, Ozark, etc.

After four years in the Navy and six years in the Army National Guard, I decided to move to Alaska from Northern California to study aviation management because its exposure to the industry is second to none. Within five miles of where I sit here in Anchorage is one of the world’s busiest cargo airports, one of the busiest general aviation airports in the U.S., the world’s busiest seaplane base, and one of the most critical military installations in the world. On a daily basis I get to see a Piper Super Cub, a Boeing 747, and a C-5 Galaxy share the same airspace in the same line-of-sight.

I will be leaving Alaska and moving to Rockford next year, getting back to family in the area and completing my last math class at Rock Valley. I desperately need to get back to the interstate highway system, significantly less air travel times, butter burgers, and to a Cubs game. The first item on the agenda is to live on freshly picked, straight-outta-Pecatonica sweet corn for a week straight once summer kicks in. Sweet corn is the lobster of the Midwest, you know.

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