Alarming news stories on instructor and student down at HPN

"Tom Fleischman" k wrote in
message
news:260420051651377491%bodhijunkoneeightyeightjun ...
Here a couple of alarming stories about the pilots who went down at HPN
last weekend:

First:

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/p...0050426/NEWS02
/504260335/1018&template=printart

Pertinent quote:

Paramedic had set sights on sky

By BILL HUGHES AND CANDICE FERRETTE

THE JOURNAL NEWS

YONKERS Paramedic Lev Naoumov briefly considered going to medical
school after graduating from college with a biology degree before the
urge to become a professional pilot took hold of him a few months ago.

Yesterday, his family and friends were still reeling from the outcome
of that career decision, which led to the well-liked 23-year-old man's
death, along with his instructor, in a plane crash Saturday
snip
Gary Reben, 27, another fellow paramedic, said that he had been out
shooting pool with Naoumov on Friday night, and his friend had said he
would not be flying the next day because of bad weather in the
forecast.

And...

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/p...0050426/NEWS02
/504260334/1018&template=printart

Pertinent quote:

By RICHARD LIEBSON
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: April 26, 2005)

PORT CHESTER A flight instructor who was killed in a plane crash
Saturday afternoon near Westchester County Airport did not like flying
in bad weather but was working overtime to save money so he could visit
his ailing father in a Puerto Rican hospital, his brother said
yesterday.


So here we have an instructor who is looking to work overtime to make
enough money to go to Puerto Rico to visit his sick father and a
student pilot who was out late the night before drinking in a bar
because he didn't expect to be flying the next day.

This does NOT look good.

Everybody knows my feelings about these things, so don't take this
personally. I feel this way generally, and my criticizm is general in nature
and not meant to flame you. I hope you take it that way.

All depends on your perspective. It might not look good to you or to someone
else, but to me, it looks like a whole lot of assumption from reading
something in a news article at a WAY too early point in an accident
investigation.

You know what this ACTUALLY reminds me of...I'll tell you.

It reminds me of something we demonstration pilots would talk about from
time to time in some back room at some airport or airbase flight ops after a
show when we got together with each other and got rid of the "outsiders".
We would laugh over a coke or two and discuss our business.

We all seemed to agree on one thing when the subject came up. That when
doing a low altitude demonstration, if our bird suddenly suffered a
catastrophic failure inside it somewhere and caused one of us to dig a VERY
big hole in the middle of the field as our last act on earth, we could
always count on at least one guy watching from the crowd to run out to the
crash; stand there and shout to the world what HE thought we had done wrong
to cause the crash.
In other words, you can speculate like this if it's your thing. For all I
know you're a really nice fellow with perfectly innocent intentions. You
might not be that guy in the crowd for all I know. :-)))))
Like I said, no personal flame intended, but
just be aware that there are a WHOLE lot of professionals out here who don't
say things like this after a crash and don't care for it much at all.
In our circle you can find yourself drinking very much alone at the bar
thinking like this. I'm not you, but FWIW, I'd wait for some substantial
results before commenting like this on any crash and leave the early
speculation to the grade school set.

Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship
Commercial Pilot; CFI; Retired
dhenriquestrashatearthlinktrashdotnet
(take out the trash :-)