When Harrison Ford had his incident on the golf course, the media said he crashed ! Not true, he made an emergency landing just like we as pilots were taught and practiced. He did an excellent job of not killing himself or anyone else. Why can't they just give the facts ?
Bob
The news media, and the pilot population as well, seem to always point out that certain accidents happened "while they were on their way to Oshkosh", or "while they were returning from Oshkosh", as if the event itself somehow contributed to the accident. The fact is, aircraft accidents (like auto accidents) happen with some frequency. There are no doubt some folks who get involved in auto accidents on the way to or from Oshkosh as well. Nobody makes mention of that.
The accident and the event are only tangentially connected. The event certainly didn't cause the accident. The accident may well have occurred on that day to that airplane regardless of whether the pilot was heading to or from a particular event or just riding around for a pleasure flight. It's not the event's fault.
Oh, and on a side note, unless you're buying pants, "Oshkosh" is one word with only one upper case letter. "OshKosh" is a trademark of the "OshKosh B'gosh" corporation, and not the way to spell the city's name (nor the Chief for which it is named). Sorry, that's a pet peeve of mine. Thanks for understanding.
Cheers!
Joe
Measure twice, cut once...
scratch head, shrug, shim to fit.
Flying an RV-12. I am building a Fisher Celebrity, slowly.
Well, that's kinda my point. The pilots that would most benefit from training by participating in forums like "Preventing LOC" don't participate. Can't just ignore them because we are all a piece in the puzzle. Even when we avoid flying with/around them, they are impacting our insurance rates and regs that we all have to follow.
There are a few people that get in a plane with the intention of dying. Excluding 9-11, those flights are usually solo and there's usually no specific destination. Nothing to indicate that was the case here. The pilot had a plan, it just wasn't a very good one. I've been there, not my proudest moment.
The Zenith accident is extra sad since those young folks seem like the kind of nice people we meet at Osh. I dont think he had a death wish. Just a guess, but if he was a sport pilot maybe he never had any training nor ever experienced losing control from vfr in imc weather. We dont know if he had any imc training oreven if the Zenith had an artificial horizon . Night imc is tough and even if marginal can be bad. It says " no record of a flight briefing", Did he totally ignore that part of flight planning or more liklely he got something on a cell phone that he thought was good enough. If I was departing in night imc, especially in a plane with lesser equipment, I'd want a real thorogh conversation with a actual FSS person., maybe supplement with a radar/satelite view. Ar 4 am there may not have been many current reports. He may have had some visibility under clouds and intended to fly that way, had a gps, might have had some lighted features on the ground near the airport, that vanished over farmland. We dont know the exact weather, but waiting 2 hours for daylight might have been a life saver.