An evil sonafabitch in Indiana didn't take his daughter to school Monday, taking her to the airport instead. Sometime later, he flew a Cessna with the girl aboard right into his ex-Mother-in-Law's house, killing both his daughter and himself.
Authorities will not know for sure whether the crash was intentional until the National Transportation Safety Board completes its investigation,
This makes the Authorities sound a little thick.
naw, that's just the NTSB's usual way. they like to be anal-retentively thorough in investigating every single aircraft crash they can investigate (every single one where they can get their grubby paws on any wreckage, that is), and they like to be officially very no-comment until they're done sifting through it.
ReplyDeletein their defense, they usually do do a pretty good job of it, although they take their time. the official incident reports they end up writing afterwards tend to be fair and reasonable.
I'm sorry about the daughter, but how long before we hear the call to ban those evil assault Cessnas?
ReplyDeleteYou won't hear the calls to ban evil assault Cessnas directly. You see, people who have MONEY fly, own, and use airplanes. In other words, "good" people. Guns, cigarettes, alcohol, and fatty foods on the other hand are only used by "commoners" at best and by "dumb, inbred, racist, anti-government hillbillies" at worst. That's right folks, another case of elitism at its' finest.
ReplyDeleteSnap, you're wrong. Read the private pilot magazines and you'll see a long-running war on "general aviation" that's been cranked way up since ll Sept 01. Now, whether that's an attempt to reserve flying for the Algores of the world, is worthy of conjecture.
ReplyDeleteRead the obituary, just this morning, of a member of my son's flying club. Came to my area as a migrant, made friends with crop-dusters, taught himself English so he could learn to fly, then taught himself to fly (and no, did not die in a crash). It's surprising how many pilots are not rich. After you see the overhaul rates, maybe not so surprising.
Snap, your bit clueless on that one. Most of the other pilots I know are like me, blue collar and scraping money together to feed their flying addictions. GA is under attack on a regular basis even for the the pilots who are better off, just look back a few years when Mayor daley bulldozed Miegs field in the middle of the night so he could build a park.
ReplyDeletepn nj, They did that shortly after 9/11. No flying near stadiums or any gatherings over 10,000. (within 3NM or 3k') Airlines are still OK to fly low approaches over 84k people in a football stadium though. Go figure. Look how much damage Cory liddle did with his SR22 out in NY, small GA planes are lighter than cars and usually do less damage, especially if there is not a fire.
They are going after GA just like guns, a little at a time, regulating and taxing them out of the reach of ordinary people. They just recently announced that the TSA is going to start randomly inspecting part 91 operations, (Boy it'll be fun when they find my 1911 that I legally CCW while flying part 91)
Oh, believe me, I'm well aware of the hostile sentiments of the government toward GA. However, that's usually GA by the ordinary guy. Joe Citizen in his Cessna 150 or RV-6. You think they're going to try to overregulate 135 charter ops, freight runs, or fractionally owned jets? Nope. (Well, some may say they already are, myself included.) I guess what made me post what I did earlier was an editorial in the USA Today shortly after that baseball player and his CFI augered into that apartment building. It stopped just short of condemning all small airplane pilots, but there was a lot of hand wringing over how often such things happen and potential terrorist use. It did call for more regulation, but not with the same...fervor as with guns or other activities. I'll have to see if I can find it.
ReplyDeleteHere it is: http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-10-11-our-view_x.htm
So yeah, I guess I didn't quite make myself clear the first time around. Sorry about that. Wasn't aware of the TSA and 91 ops thing, that irritates the hell outta me. Gonna have to look that up.
(Sorry for the lengthy post, all.)