2007 09 black eye

VINTAGE INSTRUCTOR

THE

BY DOUG STEWART

Black eye I woke myself up a few mornings ago rubbing my right eye quite vigorously. It was itching rather intensely. Checking my eye out in the mirror, I found it was swollen to almost twice the size of my left eye. By midday that swollen eye had turned into one heck of a shiner. Throughout the rest of the day, and for several days thereafter, I was always embarrassed when having to respond to the question “How did you get that black eye?” with the answer that I had done it to myself.

As I reflected on this situation, I realized that I wasn’t the only pilot to give himself a black eye. As regrettable as it might be, it seems that pilots are doing it almost on a weekly basis, and the black eye that they inflict is suffered not only individually, but also by the entire Part 91 pilot population. Although it is only a very small handful of pilots that generates negative media attention, we all tend to be guilty by association in the public mind.

Because of our love affair with all things relating to aviation, we as pilots tend to forget that the vast majority of the world does not share our passion for flight. Every time a pilot does something questionable, the media will jump all over it. The negative image the media creates is absorbed by those who get their information from the daily papers, radio, and television, creating an atmosphere of fear and aversion to everything in the sky with an engine attached to it. This mentality gets passed on to elected officials, and the next thing you know there is a hue and cry to limit general aviation in one way or another. Let me discuss several examples.

Just a little over a week ago, a Cherokee Six en route from Maine to my home base airport of 1B1 came out of the clouds in pieces, with the vast majority of the aircraft crashing not far from a home in a pristine part of

the Berkshire Hills in western Massachusetts. Witnesses to the crash said there had been a loud “bang” sounding like thunder, and shortly thereafter the airplane came “diving out of the clouds.”

The local newspaper report was almost comically ignorant of the basic facts of aeronautics and aviation. It was filled with conjecture predicated on witness accounts from people who knew nothing about aviation. But the fallacies and inaccuracies that filled the report were most surely accepted by the readers of that publication as gospel. And to add fuel to the fire (actually there was no post-crash fire because the wings, containing whatever fuel was still on board, had separated from the airplane long before it hit the ground, a fact left out of the newspaper report), the paper included a sidebar article detailing all the airplane accidents in the county, dating all the way back to the ’70s.

If I knew nothing of aviation, that article might have inspired me to call my local congressman demanding that he do something to limit the amount of aircraft that flew over the county. If that article hadn’t provoked a call, yesterday’s article would have, as it reported the initial findings of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) preliminary report, which had just been released.

The paper quoted the NTSB report fairly accurately, but that report hardly presented pilots as a group of safetyconscious folks. The NTSB report was rather extensive for a preliminary report, stating that the accident was evidently an act of “pilot error.” The pilot had been notified by air traffic control (ATC) of “severe weather, off your right side, heading your way at 30 knots,” but he did nothing to alter course and avoid the cell. Thirteen minutes after ATC advised the pilot of the weather, the pilot

I can’t think of any excuse, other than for a couple of emergency scenarios, for violating a TFR, especially one such as this that had gained perhaps even international exposure.

34 SEPTEMBER 2007

and his passenger were dead.

Perhaps when the final report is issued we’ll know more, but for now, as I walk down the main street of my local town in a light drizzle, I see the look of fear in some folks as they stare up toward a sky obscured with clouds while the sound of an airplane passes overhead. I’m surprised no one has asked me, “How did you get that black eye?”

I said before that I would discuss several examples, so here’s another one. Most folks in America, regardless of where they live, were aware that the president of Russia was coming to meet with our president. Their meeting was to be held at the senior Bush’s Maine seaside residence. You didn’t have to be a pilot to know this, as it was headline news everywhere.

Pilots learned early, through numerous sources, that a temporary flight restriction (TFR) would be established over Kennebunkport during this presidential conclave.

One didn’t need any kind of special equipment to understand the limits of the TFR, as the New York sectional chart depicts the entire area of the TFR in white. It requires no intelligence whatsoever to understand that if one wanders into the boundaries of this area, so clearly delineated on the chart, while the TFR is active, one will be intercepted and face disciplinary action.

Despite the problems that the flight service station was undergoing at the time, every briefer I spoke to over a five-day period made sure that I was aware of the TFR. Every time I checked my e-mail there was an announcement from one organization or another of the TFR. How could anyone miss this one? Yet there are now six pilots who have had their pilot certificates suspended for a mandatory 90 days because they violated the TFR. I must admit that I really don’t feel sorry for them, but I do feel sorry for all the rest of us, who now face further scrutiny from overzealous politicians because of that handful of inattentive pilots. I can’t think of any excuse, other than for a couple of emergency scenarios, for violating a TFR, especially one such as this that had gained perhaps even international exposure. I know I am not alone as I rub my sore eye.

The last example I’d like to discuss did receive national exposure. Sometimes Darwin Award winners gain that kind of notoriety. I am sure that many of you have heard of the pilot who, upon witnessing Matt Younkin fly his routine in the Beech 18 at Sun ’n Fun Fly-In at Lakeland, Florida, decided he could do the same thing in his Baron. He even tried it flying home from the event but was stopped by a passenger sitting in the right seat. But that did not keep him from continuing to try, and about two weeks after Sun ’n Fun he found out the hard way that he really couldn’t roll his Baron. He won the Darwin Award for his efforts, but the really sad thing is that his four passengers didn’t merely end up with the black eyes all the rest of us suffered; they were all removed from the gene pool along with the pilot.

And he wasn’t the only pilot since that April gathering to do such a foolhardy thing. Toward the end of June, about 40 miles south of 1B1, another pilot got the award,

this time for attempting a loop from 250 feet above ground level and stalling and spinning out of the top of it. As in the previous accident, this pilot took his passenger with him on his journey west.

It is a sad, sad fact that we are our own worst enemies when it comes to presenting a good, positive, safe vision of aviation to the vast non-flying public. Even though it is only a tiny handful of pilots that gives aviation its black eye, we must all share in the responsibility. If we witness pilots who are acting in a reckless or cavalier manner, it is our responsibility to speak up. Say something to the pilot. Say something to the authorities, if necessary. It is not only our insurance premiums that escalate every time a dumb pilot does something stupid; the hue and cry of those who would limit our flying freedoms soars as well.

Although my aging body might be susceptible to an occasional self-inflicted black eye, I sure don’t want to give one of the things I love the most, aviation, a black eye.

Nor do I want anyone else inflicting that black eye. I want to be sure that no one is trying to stop any of us from flying when there are…blue skies and tail winds.

Doug Stewart is the 2004 National CFI of the Year, a NAFI Master Instructor, and a designated pilot examiner. He operates DSFI Inc. (www.DSFlight.com) based at the Columbia County Airport (1B1).

VINTAGE AIRPLANE 35