Comments on: Flying with Family

By: MaxDamage

MaxDamage — Wed, 27 May 2009 06:32:14 +0000

While we’re talking about risks, leaving widows and orphans behind and all that, I’d like to take the opportunity to note that what might seem risky isn’t always so to those who know what they’re doing.

Take those videos we’ve all seen of traps on the boat. Risky? Sure. But there’s good folks there in white shirts helping that pilot aboard, there’s a bunch more ready and able with the firefighting gear, the tractors, the chocks and chains, and more in the bowels of the ship making sure that cable will arrest properly.

What looks dangerous is so, but it can be a calculated danger, one with good odds in your favor.

It looks risky, and it is, but we’ve learned over the years how to make those risks the least they can be.

As a counter-point, I give this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57SXyEwPbI4

Full of fury and motion, things seem to happen too fast, and yet it’s a safer sport than Olympic ping-pong statistically.

I’m thinking the former carrier pilots view that and discover something they’d rather do than golf. For sound, fury, and g-forces it’s on par (there’s that golf joke again) with a cat shot.

Also costs about $35 million less for the ride.

Which, these days, that ain’t nothing.

– Max

By: virgil xenophon

virgil xenophon — Wed, 27 May 2009 06:31:18 +0000

Wilko/

Go down to Southern Ill–they’ve got PLENTY of mountains, erm, large, erm, small hills and valleys to do some “contour flying”–as long as you don’t run into any AMAX coal conveyor towers.

By: Wilko

Wilko — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:37:37 +0000

Just returned from the best flight I ever took. Over Sedona and to the Grand Canyon and back. I packed the whole family in a rented Stationair. I couldn’t have been more thrilled. While my family liked the sightseeing they still didn’t quite understand the goofy grin on Dad/ Husband. They don’t quite get my love of aviation, but they do recognize that it’s hard wired.
I not only saw one of the great wonders of the world from the air, but was able to share it with those closest to me. Hard to explain but it was one of those bucket list type things.
Flying in the flat lands of Illinois will never be the same.

By: Dust

Dust — Wed, 27 May 2009 00:11:34 +0000

Any, Yeah you did! Grade A Buzz Killer!

By: P-3W

P-3W — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:59:19 +0000

Husband was a P-3 pilot and a T-28 instructor at the time, and he had taken enough lessons to fly a little single engine plane at the local airport in Corpus Christi. He was so excited and wanted to take my Dad flying with him, who was a jet-jock when I was born and hadn’t flown since. Dad refused with a thanks-but-no-thanks. I REALLY didn’t want to go with him, but I did, and left the kids to watch from the ground with my folks. Once we were airborne, I said, “OK — now let’s go down.” He insisted we sightsee a little, but I kept saying that I’d had enough. I wouldn’t let the kids go up with him either. Partly I was so concerned because I didn’t think the plane was sound — irrational, I know, but there you go. The other part was the fact that our children could watch us crash and die in front of them and I REALLY didn’t want that.

I know my Husband was a good pilot and flew long hours and even taught others how to fly, but I just couldn’t believe that he could really do it — really fly. I know I was freaking out too much and felt badly for doubting his abilities — ones he’d worked so hard to learn and master — but I just couldn’t help it. Small planes scare me to death still.

I feel for those who don’t come home, whether from fate or from inaction or whatever, from the cropdusters who snag a powerline, to sightseers, to cargo, to military. Flying’s a risky business and risky for those left behind. I’ve been on that end as well with the worrying and fear when a plane goes down and before the squadron is announced. Sucks. Big time.

By: Anymouse

Anymouse — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:47:45 +0000

No, I fight with them, not for them. Did I sound too much like a freedom grabber in my post?