Category: Flying

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.

Hopefully others won’t have to deal with what I went through

According to AvWeb’s NewsWire, the FAA is FINALLY getting the idea that it’s better to have pilots who are on anti-depressants than it is to have depressed pilots who are afraid to seek treatment for fear of losing their medicals.

Let’s hope this doesn’t take as long as most FAA studies.

Even the worst day flying…

I took my wife, Vicki, her two kids, Laura and Stevie, and Stevie’s friend Lindsey flying today. I’ve been waiting for good weather for the last two weeks and not got it, and today it was finally good. Unfortunately the plane wasn’t available until late afternoon, which is less than optimal because it means lots of convective turbulence and higher winds. But even if I didn’t have four other people I wanted the Lance – when you’ve got people who’ve never flown before, I think they’d be more impressed by the roominess of the Lance, not to mention the club seats and the rear door so that they can get in and sit down while you’re still pre-flighting.
Continue reading “Even the worst day flying…”