Vocational affiliation with Airhitch®

GET INVOLVED! HELP US KEEP THIS SYSTEM WORKING -- SO IT CAN BE THERE FOR YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS (WHO INCLUDE US AND OUR FRIENDS AND ANYONE WHO WANTS TO TRAVEL CHEAP AND FREE!) WHEN WE NEED IT!

- Join the Airhitch® Online Staff -- wherever you are!

- Become the Airhitch® Campus Coordinator on your campus!

Have you Airhitch®ed? Do you have good writing skills, net-literacy, and a decent knowledge of American and European geography? Trade your extra time and good energy against FREE or vastly-reduced-rate air transportation, on your own hours and right from your dormroom or livingroom (or wherever your most convenient 'net-connection happens to be)! Become part of the AIRHITCH® ONLINE STAFF!

You can participate in a really FUN and EDUCATIONAL affiliation program and earn credits toward FREE air travel, as well as even possibly some money, all in your spare time from the comfort of your own living quarters (or, perhaps, if you don't have your own computer, the nearest campus computer-lab!)! If you've ever Airhitch®ed, or plan on doing so soon, and if you fit the qualifications described above, AIRHITCH® NEEDS YOU to be part of the Airhitch® Online Staff, a cooperative effort to answer the thousands of emails we get each day from people enquiring about Airhitch® and its associated systems, and to run our AIM live-chat channels. Anytime one of your correspondents signs up for Airhitch® or any of its associated systems, you will earn a credit toward free, or vastly reduced-rate, air travel, to anywhere Airhitch® sends people.

If this kind of opportunity is of interest to you, (1) email us at affiliation-at-airhitch-dot-org* telling us about yourself and your qualifications (resumés suck, and we don't have the time to check them out anyway, so just TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF: where you've been; what you've been doing; where you think you're headed in life, if anywhere; what travel experiences you've had; whether you've had any experience in formal writing or editing. And SELL US ON YOURSELF: show us some examples of your writing, of your geographical knowledge, and your understanding, from reading the stuff on our website or other sources, of what Airhitch® is and how it operates. If we're impressed -- YOU'RE HIRED!); and (2) find us "live" online to take part in AOS online seminars and "hang out" in our chatroom on AIM, the AOL Instant Messenger! (You can start right now -- there's nothing stopping you!)

Are you situated on or near a college or university campus? Become the Airhitch® Campus Coordinator on your campus!

HISTORICO-PHILOSOPHICAL OVERVIEW

"AIRHITCH®", a trademark registered with the U.S. and Canadian patent and trademark offices, is the name of an organized space-available system, started by students in 1969 on a small grant from a university student-activities office, for accessing commercial passenger air transportation.

The system has been written about extensively in the popular press since it acquired its present name in 1983 (the first known reference to it was in Consumer Reports Travel Letter of June, 1985, but it has been written about since in such publications as the New York and Los Angeles Times, the Harvard Let's Go guide to Europe, and even Good Housekeeping, as well as in numerous campus newspapers).

In simple terms, Airhitch® is a METHOD OF ACCESS to commercial jets flying to Europe and other popular student destination regions, which helps people MINIMIZE COST and MAXIMIZE FREEDOM OF SCHEDULE AND ITINERARY on travel between certain regions of the world: through agreements with various airlines, tour operators, and other providers of commercial jet air transportation (known generically as "transportation-providers" or "TPs"), Airhitch® makes it possible to travel anytime one desires to Europe, the Caribbean Basin, Hawaii, and along such other "route-corridors" as may have at any given moment "Airhitchable" flights operating along them, at a very low cost, the equivalent of a few hours' pay at a "McJob" (example: between the east coast and Europe, $165!), in return for a disposition toward flexibility on the part of the traveler. "Flexibility" means simply that Airhitchers must be willing and able to accept a flight any time within a given period (3-5 days) and to travel between regions rather than between specific city points, departing from any city in their departure region and landing in any city in their destination region. (And part of OUR task -- the task of the AOS -- is to help people ADAPT to whatever is available between regions, by showing/telling them how to get around WITHIN regions very cheaply, so as to enable them to keep their overall costs WAY DOWN!)

THE COLLEGE-STUDENT POPULATION -- AIRHITCH®'S BASE CONSTITUENCY

Because the student population (as opposed to, say, business travelers or families taking limited-duration vacations) in general "naturally" have such flexibility, and because of their limited budgets, their lack of time constraints, a generally "exploratory" approach to travel, and because of their consequent strong desire to MINIMIZE COST and MAXIMIZE FREEDOM in travel, students are ideal users of the Airhitch® system. Airhitch® has had this system in place for the use of students and other members of the academic community, as well as anyone else who can "travel like a student", i.e., be flexible, for over three decades, although recently (since winter, 2002-2003), the system has been in a phase of rapid reorganization with outreach-orientation which includes expanding the concept geographically and recruiting more campus coordinators and passengers.

EXPANSION PROSPECTIVES

The bulk of Airhitchers use the system to travel to and from Europe, since that's what it was originally started for, but we are always looking to expand our geographical "coverage" to include additional corridors. One program, Sunhitch, connects the northeastern U.S./Canada with resort destinations in the Caribbean and Mexico. This program is especially popular with college students during their breaks. We also have a domestic program, Airhitch® USA, which operates between the north American mainland and Hawaii.

The success of the system (it's really an "anti-system" -- a system to help people "beat The System"!) over three-plus decades has been in part due to its "purity" and authenticity. Airhitch® was started not for purposes of maximization of return on capital investment (commonly called "profit"), but rather for purposes of OUTREACH and SELF-HELP, by and for UNSTRUCTURED, EXPLORATORY, BUDGET TRAVELERS. The Airhitch® concept (although it was not, then, called by the name "Airhitch®") was born in 1969 on a college campus, founded by someone who had just graduated, who had to scrimp and save in order to get to Europe the summer after graduation, who thought all students should be able to get to Europe without the cost of airfare standing in their way and who, because of his somewhat unique understanding of the economics of air transportation, saw a way to make this possible. Although Airhitch®'s original "grandfather" has become a grownup and although Airhitch®'s reach has now extended to millions of Airhitchers, we don't want to lose contact with or become insulated from the population we reach out to, or to lose our peer-participation orientation -- and that's exactly where you come in: it is a major "plus" for the people who keep this system going to be part of the campus culture and thus to "turn people on" to Airhitch® from among his/her peers.

TURNING PEOPLE ON TO AIRHITCH®

So, what are some of the ways you can "cheerlead" for Airhitch®? The possibilities are endless! All you really need, these days, (though a voice-phone and/or answering-machine might help!) is access to an Internet connection, and a desire to talk to people and excite them about the possibilities of travel to Europe on an "exploratory" basis (that is, without having everything planned out from start to finish). You can do general postering, or hand out leaflets at the cafeteria, make contact with the language and art departments, any travel clubs, administrative university offices which have contact with a lot of potential travelers (like the foreign student advisor or study-abroad programs), even conduct "real-time" activities like throwing "Airhitch®" parties, giving seminars, or setting up a table outside the student union or the library to dispense the free program description, talk about the system, and even sign up passengers on the spot if you can manage a net-connection at that spot!

But the above are just suggestions. The only limits to your activities in spreading the word about Airhitch® are your own creativity limits!

ENERGY EXPENDITURE

This depends totally on you and how you organize your efforts and channel your energies, and how much energy you WANT to expend. One of the central pillars of the "Airhitch® ethos" is VOLUNTARISM: literally everything you do is voluntary! We don't want people to do stuff because they have to, but only because they want to. Since you'll be running your own "show", you can set your own hours. If you have (and decide to use!) a voice-phone, you will probably want to set aside a few fixed hours per week to be by your phone answering "live" the people calling you in response to your publicity efforts, but since you can work from your own room or apartment (or perhaps carry a cellphone!), you can do other things between calls. Of course you can also have an answering machine or voice-mail field your calls for you; and if you're "wired" to your University computer system and/or the Internet, you can reach people and even field and service their enquiries -- both on your campus and, via Internet, elsewhere -- electronically. We will, if necessary, teach you how to manage all this stuff and even, if you want us to, help you set up a website which "feeds" into the central Airhitch® website (the one you are reading this on now!) at www.airhitch.org, with a way to track the people YOU exclusively attract to the system, and for which you will be compensated. And if you have or have access to a net-connection, ipso facto you will become a member of the "Airhitch® Online Staff", which means you will be part of a worldwide social network of people learning and teaching each other about Airhitch®!

HOW TO PROCEED

If you are interested in pursuing the possibility of becoming an Airhitch® campus coordinator, and/or an AOStaffer, (1) email us, via affiliation-at-airhitch-dot-org* your statement of qualifications and/or a letter of application, and (2) find us "live" online to take part in AOS online seminars and "hang out" in our Travel Tips Chat chatroom on AIM, the AOL Instant Messenger! (You can start right now -- there's nothing stopping you!)

NEXT SCHEDULED PROBABLE AIRHITCH® CHATROOM VOCATIONAL AFFILIATION SEMINAR:

Sun., Aug. 20, '06, 6pm-8pm EST (GMT-4): Combined Campus Coordinator & Online Staff Seminar

NOTE: You must be able to access the chatroom using AOL's Instant Messenger (AIM). You do NOT have to be an AOL subscriber to use AIM, and it is free, and can either be downloaded or used remotely via your browser. Due to a lot of wasted seminar time recently with people who are not altogether "up to speed" technically, all first-time seminar participants must come to a technical-skills check-out pre-seminar, starting one hour prior to the seminar proper, in order to be "checked out" on their use of AIM, or, to receive guidance and instruction on how to use it for their respective platforms.

NEXT PROBABLE UPCOMING SEMINAR, AFTER THE ABOVE: Sat., Aug. 26, or Sun., Aug. 27, 6-8PM EST.

SCHEDULE YOUR OWN SEMINAR! Because of conflicting schedules, YOU can now help determine the timing of the next seminar! Although there may already be a next-seminar-time posted, this can be changed as a result of scheduling input from prospective participants like yourself, so current and prospective CC's/Online Staff affiliates are urged to let us know the best times for you to attend, by filling out the following simple little CGI form, three dates/time-slots (in order of preference), and we will attempt to optimize these data out and schedule seminars at times when everyone can comfortably be there! The results will be tabulated Wed., Aug. 16, at 11:59pm edt and posted, as soon as possible thereafter, here (i.e., on the Web page affil.htm#calendar). Obviously, if you see no change in the posting when you check after the above time, then the originally-scheduled seminar will go ahead as planned.

..........................................SEMINAR AVAILABILITY.............................................

* To see why we don't use the at-sign or dot in giving you our email addresses, click here.

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