kentblair

Irresponsible Media reporting

2005-12-13T02:30:03Z

Following up one of my pet peeves this weekend, the irresponsible reporting following the Southwest Airlines crash at Midway. As a safety profesional and airline pilot, I have yet to read a well written report on the mishap. Basically , all that the media wants to do is throw out their own opinions on how screwed up the pilots were without any facts. One person who usually gets it right is John Nance on ABC. My wife tells me I should do something like that in the future. I tell her, "I wouldn't say what the headline hounds want to hear." I'd have to say "Investigators will have to gather all the FACTS before they determine the cause of the mishap." And it was a mishap, not an accident. The plane was there on purpose. The pilots may have totally screwed the pooch, or they may have done a great of not ending up in the houses across the street.
My prayers go out to the family who lost their child, I can not begin to imagine their grief. Maybe some good can come of this tragedy, that will save lives in the future. I know it will be of little consolation to that family.

Clear And Visibility Unlimited (CAVU)

2005-11-01T16:11:05Z

It's been great flying the last few days, the weather patterns have conspired to blow away most of the dust, smog, bugs etc...that are usually present. Coming down to Atlanta a few days back we could see the field 80 miles out. This doesn't happen. It happened a lot flying in to Yuma, where 100 mile visibility wasn't uncommon, plus Yuma was easy to pick out as a green spot in a sea of brown. The weather was so nice over the last 3 day trip that we were able to keep the seat belt sign turned off for the whole time that we were above 10,000 feet. No turbulence or choppy air at all. First time this has ever happened. It is a welcome relief, after a summer of flying around in the remnants of over 26 tropical storms.

Speaking of bugs, smacked a pretty big one as we were touching down last week. Pretty much covered the whole windscreen in front of me. Not a good time to be shifting around to try and see out another part of the airplane. Bugs are big here in Georgia, nowhere near the mutant dragonflies around Victoria though. We taxied on to the gate, laughing and a little queasy, and called maintenance for a "bug scrub."

Used to give my wife the "student puke report" when I was teaching aerobatics in Corpus, she really appreciated it. Now I guess she'll get the bug report. Didn't go out flying with the intent of getting someone sick, it's just that some folks don't cotton to being upside down, loops, rolls etc...The maneuver that surprisingly caused the most problems was the inverted flight demo. You roll the plane upside down and just hold it straight and level, 1 G flight. Have to be strapped in tight or you'll fall out....just kidding. You do need to have the shoulder and waist straps snug so your feet don't come off of the pedals as gravity takes over. Guess this is the time that the chow tries to escape. Some students didnt like aerobatics, they just wanted to learn to fly straight and level so they could go fly a P-3 around for a career. I loved teaching aerobatics to those who really enjoyed it.

All this talk of chow has made me hungry, gotta go.

kentblair @ 2005-10-31T10:26:00

2005-10-31T16:28:02Z

Happy Halloween