As paragliders and hang gliders swooped overhead, the grandson of famed aviator Charles “Lucky Lindy” Lindbergh chose a stunning panoramic San Diego clifftop to announce the formation of a new incentive prize to recognize advancements in electric aircraft technology.
Seattle-area resident Erik Lindbergh says the Lindbergh Electric Aircraft Prize, or LEAP, is intended to stimulate the development of more environmentally friendly aviation technologies, and help the fledgling electric aircraft industry take off. 
Lindbergh created the prize, which actually consists of awards in four categories, through a nonprofit organization he founded, the Creative Solutions Alliance (CSA), which has partnered with the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). The four LEAP awards, which have yet to be funded, will be awarded annually at the EAA’s annual AirVenture “fly-in,” the popular air show held each July in Oshkosh, WI.
Organizers also have arranged for students and teachers from a Seattle-area high school to participate in the process and attend the awards ceremony in Oshkosh this summer. Lindbergh says six students and six teachers from Aviation High School, a project-based magnet school in Des Moines, WA, just south of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, will attend in a bid to develop curriculum and stimulate student interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Lindbergh is a founding board member of the high school, which was started in 2004.
In introducing the prize, Lindbergh says it
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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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