Why aviation is expensive

Subtitle: “Why the American Legal System turns grievers into money grubbing scum”

Some idiot pilot flew his plane into a thunderstorm, and inevitable two things happened:

1. The plane is torn into little pieces and tossed on the ground.

2. The family files a wrongful death lawsuit against anybody who had anything to do with making this flight possible. Except of course the guy’s brother, who was the one and only cause of his own demise.

Sorry, grieving family, but when your flight instructor warns you two weeks beforehand that you have “deficient decision making” when it comes to flying near “adverse weather systems”, and the before-flight weather briefing shows massive area thunderstorms (not isolated cells) on your route of flight, IT’S NOT PIPER AIRCRAFT’S FAULT THAT IT DIDN’T PREVENT YOU FROM MAKING THE FLIGHT.

So grieve all you want, but realize that your brother killed himself. Piper didn’t. Pratt and Whitney didn’t. Naples Air Center didn’t. He did. As surely as he’d taken a loaded gun and stuck it in his mouth and pulled the trigger.