Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
I saw an interview with Capt. “Sully” in which he was asked if he said any prayers before landing in the Hudson.
He replied that he had assumed all the passengers were taking care of those duties and he concentrated on safely landing the plane.
I’m glad Sully had his priorities straight.
You are supposed to pray before you leave the chocks. Worked for me: 7 engine failures in Benson gyros and still walking around.
I like the apostle Paul’s “pray without ceasing” approach. Seems to me that an ongoing conversation with the God who loves us should sharpen our ability to react in a crisis, not detract from it.
Now, that obviously places constraints on certain actions like folding of the hands, kneeling in place, facing Mecca, closing eyes, and so on.
So, was he absolutely, positively within gliding range of Palermo airport, given what he knew about winds at the time? Was there time to ensure that there was no other traffic on the runway, or that it could be cleared before he got there?
Sounds to me like maybe he decided to do the prudent thing and *not* try to stretch a glide.
If Capt Sully’s water landing had not worked out so well, would he also have been denounced as a killer?
Did you perchance actually READ the article?
The pilot abandoned his duties, opting to pray instead of following his checklist.
I’d say manslaughter charges are the LEAST he ought to be worried about.
Never saw it the checklist.
Although it was the only “yellow handle” available for me to pull a few times.
Shepard’s prayer before takeoff never hurts.
As Benjamin Franklin said, God helps those who help themselves.
Appropriately filed as Buffoonery-Flying
Not exactly where I’d like to be parked in the passenger seat under those headers. Hopefully the pilot had the good courtesty to not be hot-mike during his panic and prayer.
Lastly, at least it was not all souls lost.
Sounds like a story I heard about one of the P-fired frigates we sold to Turkey. A main space fire broke out during the turnover, and while the American trainers were fighting the fire they noticed a marked absence of Turkish crew. When someone went to get them, they were all on deck wearing lifejackets saying, “It is the will of Allah.”
I thought that changing your skivvies always comes last?
aw1…yes, I read the article. It wasn’t anywhere near detailed enough to understand the sequence of events. But I don’t like what seems to be the increasing tendency on the part of media & politicians to assume that all mistakes are criminal.
David, what part of “A Tunisian pilot who paused to pray instead of taking emergency measures…” did you not understand?
I know the article was not in left-speak, though in general usage “instead of” means that one action was taken “instead of” another. As in, praying “instead of” taking the emergency measures appropriate to the circumstances.
I suspect the pilot’s passengers would not wholly agree with your politically correct opinion.
Your likes or dislikes are irrelevant to the situation.
David,
I suspect that the difference in interpretation and understanding of the poor judgment of the pilot comes from you not being part of any aircrew.
Let me be frank: Checklists and SOP exist for a reason, and that is because experience has taught us all that to remain calm in an extremis situation, and follow the list has proven over and over again to be the proper response to ANY abnormal situation.
The pilot was trained to follow certain procedures. Those procedures included the proper response to certain abnormal situations. His aircraft, with him in command, entered a dangerous situation for which there was a published and trained-for response. He chose to ignore that and instead began to pray.
As a direct result, 16 souls lost their lives.
I would’ve hung the bastard.
PC speak has NO place aboard an aircraft, and especially not in an extremis situation.
Respects,
I remember an oft-told story in Kingsville, about the Saudi student pilot, upon entering an instructor induced spin during the T-2C out-of-control flight syllabus. When the Instructor said “You have the controls” the Saudi refused to take the stick, replying “Allah has the jet.”
So I read this story with a certain sense of “Ahem.”
My comments don’t have anything to do with PC (and I am by no means a leftist) but rather reflect concern about after-the-fact evaluation of flight crew performance by legal authorities who may never have had to make similar decisions under time pressure and almost certainly have never made them in an airplane.
If he went into full-time prayer mode and ignored checklist procedures, then I’d probably agree with the finding. OTOH, if he went to best glide, decided that going to Palermo was problematic, followed the procedures for a water landing, and muttered a few brief prayers on the way down, then I’d say an injustice has been done. I submit that from the article, you can’t determine which of these is the case.
I have to say, I was surprised when a comment that seemed supportive of religious freedom was classified as “left speak” (that whole constitution thang, you know)…then I realized the problem seemed to be the choice of religion involved.
This PC leftest would prefer that pilots pray before getting off the ground and follow brain not faith in the air, thank you. I don’t necessarily trust your god to do what’s best for me, so I’d rather depend on human no how. But David…I thought your point was a reasonable analysis of the evidence provided…politics aside.
If memory serves, courts in Italy..as well as some other European countries have shown an excessive tendency to send people to jail because of their involvement in accidents of various types. This was also a characteristic of the old Communist bloc…if there’s an accident, someone is going to jail or a labor camp. In this country, we have less of the *criminal* liability issue, but we do have a slavering tort bar that is always eager to find someone or something at fault. Sometimes bad things happen, and real-time omniscience should not be expected of any person or organization.
I’m inclined to believe the pilot was criminally negligent, but I can also tell you that the Italian air line pilots association isn’t happy with this court finding (I live in Italy and can sometimes even read the papers!). However, no union in Italy can let one of its own be punished without protesting, so I’m not sure just what’s happening here.
St Benedict favored multi-tasking: “Ora et labora.” (-*
Just a thought/question… what clear thinking individual in the first instance and given the presumed plethora of other choices in the Med area, makes a conscious decision to fly on a Tunisian flag/piloted aircraft ?…whats next?…Air Uzbekistan !…Best
PS, Agree with Zane…from the scant facts presented…sounds like criminal negligence, at a minimum .
David Foster,
You’re right about the Italian legal system re “accidents”. I remember quite well the EA-6B LL that sliced a gondola cable at a ski area in the Italian Alps about a decade ago…
re “scant facts”- Agree, but the fool was probably caught on tape muttering Allah-Akbar or something over and over. Either that or the CP is eye witness..
b2