Victor Davis Hanson Herbert Meyer has a charming way with words, so I forgave him this little bit of exuberance:
(Jetliners) are… complicated pieces of equipment, which is why the pilots who fly them are not only technically competent but intellectually capable of concentrating on doing their jobs well. These pilots aren’t sitting in the cockpit working on The New York Times crossword puzzle, or playing music on their iPods, or fooling around with the flight attendants. They are paying absolute, total attention to bringing their plane and its passengers safely to their destinations.
Actually, many of the airline pilots I have known are totally engaged in gettng themselves safely to their destination. You getting there safely is merely a fortuitous (if unrelated) coincidence attending to the conditions of their employment and preference for self-preservation, like. And as for the New York Times crossword puzzle, a good half of those flying for the airlines are former Marine or Air Force pilots, for whom the expectation of any such exertions is clearly unfair. iPods, not so much – especially on the transoceanic routes, I’m thinking, when there’s nobody out there to talk to.
But all of this is beside the point:
I don’t mean this to be rude — and I certainly don’t mean this to be partisan — but isn’t it obvious that most of the people we’ve elected to the House and Senate haven’t got the technical knowledge and the intellectual firepower to guide our country safely through the turbulent skies? And isn’t it obvious that most of these preening buffoons spend nearly all their time lining their own pockets, showboating, raising money for their re-elections or running for higher offices — in short, concentrating their energies and attention on everything except doing the jobs for which we’ve elected them?
Noticed that myself, and Meyer’s remedy is a familiar one: Throw the bums out. The problem – as ever – seems to be that while we’re all fashed fit to foaming with other people’s congresscritters, we seem to find our own dear rogues lovably forgivable.
Thus, the government we deserve.
He must not know very many pilots…
But I concede his point.
BTW, that wasn’t written by VDH it was written by Herbert E. Meyer (whoever the Hell that is…)
Why do people worry about flying. If it’s your day, it’s your day.
Nose
PS If it’s MY day, it’s your day, too…
Wonder what flavor those 2 Hawaiin Airlines pilots were that snoozed through and beyond their destination and had to fly 185 miles back to the airport.
Curtis ~ that was Go! Airlines (a subsidiary of Mesa Airlines, if I’m not mistaken), not Hawaiian. Mesa has a reputation with regard to stuff like that too so it wasn’t surprising to those who are aware of Mesa’s rep.
As for Congresscritters, it’s not so much that I like mine as it is the knowledge that I’d be trading one knucklhead for another. Very rarely do you find someone running for office with purely magnanimous intentions (or even partially magnanimous intentions). I’d prefer the problems I know rather than the ones I don’t know…
What do you mean “we” kemo sabe?
My Rep., Sam Johnson (R), 3rd District of Texas, is very conservative, a career Air Force pilot with combat in Korea and Vietnam, former POW, and generally pretty responsive to his constituents. However, he’s been in Congress for coming up on 18 years. That’s long enough. He is running essentially unopposed in a very safe district. That’s why I’m strongly considering running against him in the 2010 Republican Primary.
He’ll probably wipe the floor with me, but I’d like to convey a message. 79 years old and 20 years in Congress is time to retire.
Strange, I could easily fall asleep strapped to an ejection seat in a double ugly but not in a civilian aircraft. As Skippy would say; I must have trusted the bus drivers in the Navy a lot more. My thanks to the pilotes who got me through 1000+ traps. It was fun.
xairboss,
Well of course you can sleep with confidence in an ‘ejection’ seat. Worst comes to worst they’ll probably eject you too when they bail out unless they really hate you. Not all that many civilian aircraft that come with the aviator’s best friend.
Dammit, Lex, there you go again, giving me another reason to keep on drinking. Owhell, I just did a two-day abstinence test and had no seizures, so maybe I don’t need to quit right now.
I want to be numb when they come for me, numb, I tell you.
“I used to be in the intelligence business, and when we sent our projections …”
May I ask who he was referring to when he used the word “we”? Because he was not at the level where those ‘weasel’ words originated.
Cheers
Nose,
Just drive the bus! (Safely….).
I heard about an incident here near the Denver airport where the pilot and co-pilot literally fell asleep flying into Denver (commercial flight by the way) and woke up to find themselves going quite a bit faster than they were supposed to be going with Denver ATC screaming and yelling at them the whole time to wake the h*ll up and answer the radio.
Regards,
Jim C
Well!
Very refreshing to see a swabbie who knows what a crossword puzzle is!
Reminds me of the old joke: “I hope I die like my grampa, peacefully in his sleep. Not like the passengers in his car.”
Whenever I board a civilian aircraft I ask the flight crew if the pilot believes in an afterlife. Because unless my hands can get at those controls I want somebody who thinks he only has one shot at doing it right. Second chances are for losers.
Ever notice the flight crew get five-point harnesses and we get a simple lap belt? That doesn’t raise a lot of confidence either.
Have an uncle who just retired from a major airline. Stories from him make me nervous. “Oh, yeah. Ol’ Joe was an alkie, but he was a functional alkie. He could fly an airplane, just don’t ask him to drive you home from the airport.”
Shudder!
– Max
Funny story I don’t mind relating. A friend of mine, let’s call him B., is a senior Air Traffic Controller. Stellar record, Union honcho, the works. Due to retire soon because of age (government knowing better than us when we need to quit working).
So B is at a World War 2 re-enactment with a bunch of folks and has a bit of the brew, for to ease the heat of the day and lubricate the story-telling of the night. Sleeps in an APC and arises early to catch his flight back home. His government ID card remains on the floor of the APC, unknown to him.
While in line at security he calls a buddy back at base camp, giving him a progress report. Said buddy opines that B had best check his luggage because a few folks had joked about putting an inert grenade into his luggage, just for the humor that was in it.
B, in the line at security, cell phone at his ear, says out loud (like only the folks at the other end of the cell phone would hear this), “Oh, I do *not* have a grenade in my luggage.”
The next sounds heard over the cell phone at Base Camp were “Sir, come with us.” Then the call disconnected.
So there’s B, no ID but his drivers license, security folks swarming around, having come back from a re-enactment so there’s gunpowder residue on his luggage, trying to explain how he’s a Good Guy.
Let your imagination run wild, because what he went through certainly exceeded anything I came up with when that call dropped.
– Max
(Note: First time poster. Go easy on the new guy, OK?)
My wife told me a true story about flying the other night that’s also kinda funny. In an “If it doesn’t happen to you ” sorta way, that is.
A person at the company she works for had to travel overseas, to Belgium, for technical training. While there, he bought a massive block of chocolate (Belgian, natch) to bring back home for the family. About the size, literally, of a very large brick.
He also, on a related mater, bought a German clock for his wife. Round face, a wind-up model, with some sort of intricate design on it. (Yes, this is related. Promise.)
So…a week or so of job training is over, and the guy is packing to head back home. Packs the chocolate in one of his suitcases. The clock as well, close together-like, so as to keep them from being damaged.
One last tidbit of information: this was only a few months after the 9/11 attacks.
(Anyone see where I’m going with this? Just wonderin’…)
So…he departs Belgium with no problems — after all, plenty of people take home souvenirs, and almost everyone who does so brings home chocolate.
The flight back across the Atlantic lands at JFK, whereupon said guy has to clear Customs. The baggage goes through an X-ray machine, and what do the security agents see but…
…a big block of something solid, and a clock — still ticking, mind you — right next to it?
(Your imagination can take over right there, if you want.)
Moral of the story? Um…probably to pack more carefully when you go overseas. Take a second bag, if you need to. And don’t put the clock next to the chocolate.
So. After a few hours of, um, heated interrogation, the authorities let the guy go, along with his luggage.
(He never did get the clock back, though. Or the chocolate.)
That’s hilarious.
Well, I suppose B got *slightly* better treatment than he would have gotten if his good friend had told him that a terrorist had been placed in his luggage!
Jetblue jocks? Probably just unwinding on the way home from Tailhook…
I take great umbrage…many’s the crossword puzzle I did while droning around in my E-2. This line was also a gut buster…
It’s hard work, and this is why pilots are exhausted even after an uneventful flight.
Ahahahaha! But please, keeping thinking it.
Last thought, there are 4 kinds of leaders. (smart/dumb) x (lazy/busy). While you obviously don’t want dumb & busy running things, you also don’t want smart & busy either. They’re always fiddling with shit and making unneeded changes. Smart & lazy wins the day, and that’s what I want from my political leaders.
My wife told me a true story about flying the other night that’s also kinda funny. In an “If it doesn’t happen to you ” sorta way, that is.
But that’s the difference between comedy and tragedy, don’t you know. Comedy is something bad that happens to you. Tragedy is something bad that happens to me.
He is running essentially unopposed in a very safe district.
And therein lies a great part of the problem. The people who determine the boundaries and make up of the districts are the people who represent them. So district boundaries are engineered to optimize the ability of those drawing them to retain their seats.
Here in Illinois the two parties have a fair amount of accomodation between them in this matter. It is highly unusual for a House seat to be strongly challenged in the general election. It is also highly unusual for a primary to be closely contested. My district, which combines part of the city of Chicago as well as suburbs, has a Democratic Congressman. He’s actually more to the middle than most of them. But there hasn’t been a credible Republican challenger to him or his predecessor in my memory. And all the Democratic challengers to him in the primary are well to the left. I really don’t have much of a viable choice.
Regarding travel tips and chocolate clocks:
Don’t wrap your electric shaver (and its cord) around your deodorant, either.
“Absolute total attention”? I used to fly jumpseat a couple times each year. Pilots (PNFs) on long legs usually caught a quick nap once they were satisfied I couldn’t spell FSDO.
Taxi1:
Your comment about smart and lazy used to be a part of “official wisdom” in the Armed Services. My Father’s old 1942 Army “Officer’s Guide” from OCS school actually cites this as a dictum for preferred officer-types! (Of course this was well before the days of PC.)
Smart and lazy is a pretty good prescription in a stable environment like the peacetime Army.
Not so sure lazy is the right preference when things are crazy!
Flatlander:
I think the theory is that the smart and energetic carry out with alacrity the best plan-with-least-effort-to-put-into-effect that the smart but lazy guy slyly concocted in an effort to avoid re-inventing wheels for the sake of it.
Okay, it took me 3 reads but now I get the Marines or Air Force pilots comment.
Yeah, hear you on that, VX.
Well. Can’t say I ‘ve ever seen this likes of this:
WARNING!!
Open at your own risk
Gallic flair and all…..
They SAID it was turbulence! liars!