(Ace Pilot) wrote in message . com...
I think there needs to be a distinction between most pilots claiming
they would exercise better judgment than JFK and claiming they are
better than the average pilot. Average pilots do not kill themselves
in plane crashes, i.e., JFK was not average.

Well, umm. I mean, really ABOVE average pilots (think airshow and
airline) also kill themselves in plane crashes... some very dumb. It
can and does happen to the best, which might be what you're saying?

I think the rationalization that occurs in these newsgroups is that
one would not make as poor a decision as JFK did, not that ones
decision-making ability is better than the average pilot.

By all accounts, JFK usually hired a CFI on these trips as a safety
pilot. That day, everything went classically wrong: the CFI wasn't
available, the actual weather was worse than reported, his wife
delayed her arrival at the airport by several hours, and they had a
wedding to go to, which meant by that time, travel by air was needed.
(Perhaps he should've hired another pilot.)

But we don't know what actually went wrong. He was getting IFR
training, and I've flown to the islands at night myself, and know that
certainly he should've had no problem keeping upright using his
instruments. But that doesn't count other distractions. Personally,
I figured that one of his passengers decided to crawl up into the
copilot seat for the approach. Perhaps he leaned over to help with
the seatbelt. Perhaps she tilted the yoke. Perhaps his bad foot
meant he leaned on the rudder. Who knows?

The point is, it doesn't necessarily mean he was a bad pilot, or one
outside his depth (frankly, it doesn't seem that way despite what so
many others say). It just means a chain of events lead to an
accident. When such a chain comes out okay by sheer luck, a pilot
writes one of those "I learned about flying from that" articles. When
luck fails, we get a (usually common) type of accident.

Kev