C-208 Down near Bethel, Alaska

Everyone's got a theory, and I heard some interesting ones at work today. It does seem a fairly narrow range of things that might take down an aircraft on a training flight in day VFR though.
 
ppragman said:
The term for that is youthful indiscretion.
Click to expand...
Yeah. Guys that haven't sat at the company office waiting to hear from an overdue plane and knowing they never will. Guys that haven't gotten the certified letter from the FSDO.

Like one of my co workers says, it's all fun and games until you wake up in the hospital with your jaw wired shut, missing a leg, and wondering how many people you killed.
 
bustinminimums said:
What are we doing wrong. Maybe we can fix this before anyone else gets hurt. Sorry for the rant.
Click to expand...
Well, some of the stuff I heard from an ex-Era guy we had fly for us last summer gave me a pretty good idea of some of the issues. But I'd understand if you'd rather not air that stuff on a public board.
 
Roger Roger said:
Yeah. Guys that haven't sat at the company office waiting to hear from an overdue plane and knowing they never will. Guys that haven't gotten the certified letter from the FSDO.

Like one of my co workers says, it's all fun and games until you wake up in the hospital with your jaw wired shut, missing a leg, and wondering how many people you killed.
Click to expand...

I was writing something awhile ago about all of this awhile ago, trying to wrap my head around how all this stuff works.

There’s that moment when you learn about an accident. You feel a sudden sinking feeling; an ache envelopes your body. You slouch over a bit - then you start thinking about your friends. You start calling everyone you know who worked there. You facebook and email. You try to exclude the folks you care about. By process of elimination, you work through who it could be. You call your friends who may not know yet - you have to make sure that no one is left out. How could this happen?

There are lots of “you’s” in that last paragraph. Really, this isn’t about you. You didn’t just “auger in,” it wasn’t you who just died. And yet, the dead don’t experience the aftermath, the living do. Their terror is over, their fear is over, they need toil no longer. They can rest now. For the living, the work has just begun. At some point, you have to get back into the airplane and go fly. You have to make those same judgement calls that the dead made, sometimes in the same airplane, at the same places. You have to do it right so that when it is your turn to be tested, you don’t end up like your friends.

That’s a harsh lesson for a young man to learn. When my first friend in aviation died, I was 21. I cried alone on my porch in Juneau, and called into work. What a s___ thing - for a young man to be snatched away from life trying to make a living in something he loved. In a way that the uninitiated don’t understand, all pilots can comprehend what those final moments would be like. We shutter to think about the frantic control inputs, the urge to fight the inevitable, and in that last moment before impact when the reality of your situation would hit you - the landing lights reflecting off of the dark water, the frozen water crashing through the windshield... My mind still wanders to these thoughts on the more sleepless nights and I wonder - am I next?
Click to expand...
 
@ppragman Nail on the head.

I usually make sure to let family know it wasn't me, before the news hits as well. You don't want them wondering. I was in Iraq the day that the C-130 crashed in Baghdad, and couldn't get home fast enough to try and beat the news to call home.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top