Westchester County Airport

Tried to get to the airport to get a car.

Nope, not Westchester Airport.

Then finally got the last train.

rental car at the Westchester train station and went out to South Brunswick.

It runs on who you know and who owes you a favor.

Sal knew every operator at Westchester County Airport.

He knew which planes were sitting, which owners were behind on payments, which crews were available.

That knowledge was the inventory.

But we need to be very careful about... not to let those cities and states take over.

And thanks to Rob Astorino, he went out at 2 o'clock in the morning to Westchester Airport and filmed all of these people getting flights, free flights, into Westchester, out to other areas.

So we talked to Rob Astorino.

Let's go to

And so now that we've got that institution and it's a going concern, it operates on public dollars.

And so now we're designing a new institution called Westchester Aerospace and Virtues Academy, which is going to be a new public charter high school, this time actually in Westchester, right next to the Westchester County Airport building.

where we're going to educate a racially and socioeconomically diverse population of kids, where they will have, again, the ability to study a classical virtues-based education, where they're exposed to the great books, music, poetry, and art that have stood the test of time, while also being able to pursue careers in air traffic control, drone management, aircraft maintenance, and becoming a pilot.

So to marry this idea that you can marry pre-professional training in a particular industry with getting a really fantastic education, which is grounded in virtue and grounded in moral formation.

You're, you're building an air traffic control tower as part of your school.

Yes, our school will be literally prox- uh, very proximate to the Westchester County Airport.

We'll have an unobstructed view of the runway, so for that course of study, our students will be able to see literally planes landing and taking off, and they'll be able to hear the actual language that the air traffic controllers are using to direct these planes.

It's part of this, this ethos where part of your education will be a real world component.

What we're creating at, with WAVA will actually be, uh, a new type of endeavor because the goal is to make it intentionally diverse, racially and socioeconomically.

Hmm.

So, uh, the school will be located right, uh, proximate to the Westchester County Airport, but it will serve all of Westchester.

So we will equally have students who are the children of wealthy, uh, executives from IBM or PepsiCo, while also serving students who live in the housing projects in, uh, Mount Vernon or New Rochelle.

I'll Uber it up," blah, blah, blah.

And then you go, um, "All right, I'm gonna go, but Greg, we should fly through, we should connect through and go to White Plains Airport 'cause it's near where the memorial is, and that way we can all end up at the same place." And then you send me the flight to, to book.

So I book that flight, and then day of I'm like, uh, day before I'm like, "Hey, why don't we sh- should we share an Uber to the airport?" "Oh, no, I'm on a different flight." "What?" "Well, yeah, there's a bi- bigger layover, so I thought it'd be safer to go this way.

And it was cheaper." "Oh, okay.

You know, everyone...

We know JFK and LaGuardia, but there's Westchester County Airport, Stort International, Albany and Buffalo International, Syracuse and Rochester.

You got Long Island, MacArthur that most people know as Islip.

But that's something that it really is a strong suit for New York.