In order to achieve the "political balance" required on the board, the Governor appoints his own party members and "independents."
Flying is hard
- Thread starter psychlone99
- Start date
In order to achieve the "political balance" required on the board, the Governor appoints his own party members and "independents."
Yeah, unless this whole thing brings down the Rat, then I don't know that losing Leath does us any good. In fact, it probably hurts us.
But I think it does make me feel that thinking that the whole land deal between the Rat and Leath was NOT a good thing was correct.
Over $600,000 worth of "entertainment upgrades" were made to the larger plane, including over 2500 a month for high speed internet... good grief....
http://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/...cle_341b5c04-9a23-11e6-a0ca-cf73f1471dc4.html
My bad linked article says 600,000 not just 100,000 dollars
http://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/...cle_341b5c04-9a23-11e6-a0ca-cf73f1471dc4.html
My bad linked article says 600,000 not just 100,000 dollars
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Does the larger jet fly ISU athletic teams? I see the money spent was earmarked for the AD. Also, may be noteworthy that the $100,000 for internet and flight tracking was part of roughly $600k in improvements that were made to the plane including mostly safety and avionics upgrades. Seems a bit loose to imply a link from this to Leath's plane usage. Even though I am concerned with Leath's plane usage and the foundation spending I am also a little leery of this turning into a smear for political purposes.
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Large jet? A King Air is a "small" (in the business aircraft world) aircraft. It can seat 8-10 but you will be crammed in. AD uses it for some recruiting trips however due to the operating cost I believe they use the Cirrus more for that. They usually use the King Air to take staff and the couple of players they take to football media days in Dallas. I remember Rhoads taking it from Ames to Council Bluffs to recruit someone from there the day we got into the Pinstripe Bowl.
Also kind of disappointing that they didn't buy the entertainment and avionics upgrades from an in state company that employs a ton of their graduates...
Not the point. Insurance said no so theoretically the university could lose their insurance. Also it was the use of public property for personal use that is the issue. Same stuff people get upset with a president using AF1 or whatever to go on vacation.
Chiming in again as a former auditor... It's not that he was or wasn't licensed and qualified - he was. The issue from a purely audit POV is whether his personal use was specifically provided for in his employment contracts, whether his personal use squares with university policies and procedures, whether his personal use was provided for in insurance documents, whether he was provided personal use at below market costs, etc... The devil for Leath is in the details and the subsequent soft-shoe dance to cover it up until it became public and he went fully "transparent" (which he didn't hiding details of many, many flights). Also at issue is the closeness of the foundation with the president and how the aircraft were purchased and transferred to the university. This absolutely is a compensation issue (the value of his use, the fact the smaller plane was used mostly by Leath, etc...) on top of the normal policy and procedure angle.
I don't have it out for Leath as I think he is GREAT for athletics, but people need to take an emotional step back and look at this without cardinal and gold glasses on.
Leath says he did nothing wrong however he promised to no longer fly the plane. Leath said he did nothing wrong, but offered to pay damages out of his pocket. Originally the regents and certain ISU officials were saying he did nothing wrong, but those stories very recently are changing.
The official audit of his use of the plane will HAVE to be transparent as the way it was handled took it out of the university's hands and put it into the political arena where they are expert at covering themselves and sacrifiicing lambs at the altar.
The Cirrus was bought specifically for Leath. Audit will show he was the primary person to fly the plane, and then only for personal trips.
Regents President Bruce Rastetter didn’t throw his friend Leath under the bus the other day at the Board of Regents meeting when he said he was “extremely disappointed” in Leath’s personal use of university aircraft, but the Regents head clearly walked the university president to the bus stop. …
Gotta love this line.....
Doesn't the Aero E department use the smaller plane for a couple of their classes? I know they used to but I don't know if that's still the case.
But yeah, an instutition the size of ISU having a King Air and a smaller prop plane isn't a big deal so I hope this doesn't turn in to the university being forced to get rid of them. The issue is whether Leath was using them improperly, not the university having them.
Follow the right people on Twitter (one of the university pilots) and you will see that the AD does use it. Especially football. Campbell used it to fly up to Decorah early this year to meet with a recruit. I also remember Shand B. using it to fly to the QC and watch a game on a friday night.
I believe it's a private charter - King Air wouldn't be big enough.
Usually it is a Saab or Dornier 328. MBB, WBB and Volleyball all use them.
AerE used to. Current students use flight simulators rather than hands-on flight experience now. Glad I got the hands-on experience when I went through.
http://www.aere.iastate.edu/facilities/ ("Flight Simulator Lab" is described partway down the page)
Seems surprising, small single engine plane for business/high liability type travel. Interesting to see what the audit will say.
