PEOPLE
Top: The Chai
Flyers at
Oakland-Pontiac.
CHAT FLYING
This small group of Jewish pilots
gets together for the fun of it .. .
and for the meals
Dr. Ken Dickstein
checks the oil.
George Cooper in
the cockpit.
KAREN A. KATZ
I
Special to The Jewish News
hey've been called the Chay
Flyers, the Chy Flyers and
the High Flyers. In fact, a
standing joke among mem-
bers of this Jewish pilots'
club is that to be eligible for member-
ship in the Chai Flyers, you've got to
be able to pronounce the name.
The club, which began in 1981-82
as a "lofty" counterpart to the Great
Lakes Yachts Club, was the brain-
child of George Cooper, a pilot for
more than 20 years. "I'd been invited
to the Great Lakes Yacht Club many
times by friends. I thought that if jews
with boats could get together to
socialize, why not Jews with planes?
Unlike sailing, flying is not a real
social activity," he said. "You don't sit
in your plane and drink — in fact, just
the opposite."
So Cooper wrote to Danny Raskin
of The Jewish News, A blurb about
the fledgling club brought nine per-
sons to the first meeting.
There are now more than 25
members, including physicians, den-
tists, plumbers, opticians, computer
programmers, salesmen, clerks, sheet
metal fabricators, builders, jewelers
and one professional pilot.
Members' flying experience
ranges from 20 hours for a member
just learning to fly to 21 years' ex-
perience and over 8,000 hours for the
professional pilot, Norm Samsky. "If
a person has over 100 hours a year,
that's a lot," said Dr. Ken Dickstein,
a charter member and former presi-
dent of the Chai Flyers. "I generally
fly about 150 hours a year. Some of
our members have total hours of a
couple hundred to the range of 3,000
to 4,500."
The club is primarily social and
educational. Dickstein joked, "We
don't just fly, we like to eat. The group
might fly to Jackson because there is
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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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