Private Planes: Freedom, Security, and Responsibility

by "Jim Macklin" Dec 14, 2005 at
01:37 PM


It is all Bill Gates fault, Microsoft Flight Simulator
software allows any sky lune itic to practice the task of
flying into a building in their choice of aircraft. I think
the earlier versions even had the NYC skyline and WTC on the
box cover.

Certainly, it is not possible to learn how to steer and
airplane anywhere else in the world, except the USA. There
are no airplanes in the Mid-East, Far-East, Africa or any
place other than Florida, Texas, and California.

What I want to know is when will the government and the
anti-weapons/self-defense crowd admit that the security
rules themselves left the passenger and crew in an unarmed
and [mentally] defenseless state. Had every passenger had a
6 shot 38 or 45 revolver and instructions to , sit in your
seat and shot anybody who causes trouble, NONE of those
airliners would have been hijacked.

True about MS Flight Simulator. I used to fly it around the WTC (and
Megis field) myself. But, as you know, the terrorists trained at GA
schools. This is a FACT, and has been well publicized.

As far as your arming the passengers scenario, the govt. did "admit" this
implicitly by allowing pilots to be armed.

Where I live, most everyone is armed (including yours truly, with my handy
dandy Mossberg), and there is virtually no crime, so I kinda/sorta see your
point. But, I wonder how comfortable the pilots and other passengers would
feel knowing that most of their fellow passengers were armed??

I fly SWA occassionally. Imagine what would happen during their boarding
process if most of the passengers were armed?

typo corrected
"Jim Macklin" wrote
in message news:Rw_nf.28952$QW2.19358@dukeread08...
| It is all Bill Gates fault, Microsoft Flight Simulator
| software allows any sky lune itic to practice the task
of
| flying into a building in their choice of aircraft. I
think
| the earlier versions even had the NYC skyline and WTC on
the
| box cover.
|
| Certainly, it is not possible to learn how to steer an
| airplane anywhere else in the world, except the USA.
There
| are no airplanes in the Mid-East, Far-East, Africa or any
| place other than Florida, Texas, and California.
|
| What I want to know is when will the government and the
| anti-weapons/self-defense crowd admit that the security
| rules themselves left the passenger and crew in an unarmed
| and [mentally] defenseless state. Had every passenger had
a
| 6 shot 38 or 45 revolver and instructions to , sit in your
| seat and shot anybody who causes trouble, NONE of those
| airliners would have been hijacked.
| To those who will say that the possibility of gun fire in
| the cabin would cause explosive decompression, remember
that
| FAR 25 airplanes are designed and have been so for
decades,
| to resist and handle damage to the structure and
explosions
| that can leave a 20 sq. ft. hole in the fuselage. The out
| flow valve will just close a little bit for a few dozen
| bullets holes.
|
| But it is felt that death in a plane crash or with your
| throat cut by a terrorists is better than having citizens
| armed and acting in their own best interest.
|
|
| --
| James H. Macklin
| ATP,CFI,A&P
|
| --
| The people think the Constitution protects their rights;
| But government sees it as an obstacle to be overcome.
| some support
| http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/secondamendment2.htm
|
|
|
| "Skylune" wrote in message
|
lkaboutaviation.com...
|| Would one expect the airlines to act responsibly and
| admit their
|| failure to provide adequate security previous to 9/11,
and
| work
|| collaboratively to rectify their shortcoming?
||
|| Commercial aviation provided the vehicles. GA provided
| the training.
|| Would one expect GA schools to act responsibly and admit
| their failure to
|| provide adequate security previous to 9/11?
||
|
|

You are getting very close to my originally flippant answer to the
aircraft 9-11 hijack etc thing:

1) Reinforce the cockpit doors including with kevlar to make the
bulkhead bullet-proof.
2) A simple loaded light weight single shot pistol under every oxygen
mask panel.
3) The pilots have a button.....

At this point majority rules.

Would one expect GA schools to act responsibly and admit their failure to
provide adequate security previous to 9/11?

Come on, Sky-buffoon... Who could have ever imagined airliners being
used in such an insidious and evil way before 9/11? I suppose given
your known stance on GA this comment really shouldn't surprise anybody
(odd, in light of your admission to resume fight training at some
point, maybe). Feel free to find a new forum to rant and spew your
slanted nonsense - your postings are like so many mosquitoes buzzing
around my ear...

I suspect anybody with a (then) current copy of MS Flight Sim could
have done what the terrorist monkeys did after a few hours flying a 737
around in VR - it ain't rocket science.

by " Dec 14, 2005 at 11:49
AM


Come on, Sky-buffoon...

snip
I suspect anybody with a (then) current copy of MS Flight Sim could
have done what the terrorist monkeys did after a few hours flying a 737
around in VR - it ain't rocket science.

I also "suspect" this could have been done with MS Flight Sim. But, that
is not what really happened. Fact: The terrorists trained at GA schools.


I need to pull out the handy John Adams quote again: "Facts are stubborn
things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates
of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

wrote:

Come on, Sky-buffoon... Who could have ever imagined airliners being
used in such an insidious and evil way before 9/11?

Didn't one of those "Jack Ryan" novels have an airliner deliberately crashed
into Congress?

- Andrew

On 2005-12-14, wrote:
Would one expect GA schools to act responsibly and admit their failure to
provide adequate security previous to 9/11?

Come on, Sky-buffoon... Who could have ever imagined airliners being
used in such an insidious and evil way before 9/11?

Not wanting to give Skylune further ammunition (really, it's irrelevant
where the terrorists trained - it included *airline* training in airline
sims, too) - actually, there have been attempts to use airliners in this
way in the past. The most notable attempt was a FedEx DC-10 in 1994,
where a disgruntled worker who was going to be fired attempted to kill
all three crew members and crash the plane into FedEx headquarters.

--
Dylan Smith, Port St Mary, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net

Apparently the airlines would like the get their pilots from pools of
applicants w/o any jet time. Charter is the only way for most to get
initial jet time. Even military pilot usually spend time with charter
outfits before going to the airlines.

Robert M. Gary wrote:

Apparently the airlines would like the get their pilots from pools of
applicants w/o any jet time. Charter is the only way for most to get
initial jet time. Even military pilot usually spend time with charter
outfits before going to the airlines.

To the extent some ex-military pilots do spend time with "charter"
outfits, I think it is more a matter of biding their time until a major
airline is in a hiring mode than it is that "charters" are a route to
the eventual left seat at American, United, Delta, or Northwest. The
airline industry is so cyclical, and hiring decisions so surprisingly ad
hoc in some instances, that the validity of sweeping statements about
what the "airlines would like" may have a very short half-life.

When the pool of available applicants is wide and deep you may see a
certain pattern of hiring, as some have claimed was discernible at DAL,
or at UAL. When the pool is shallower and/or the time horizon is short,
availability sometimes comes down to nothing more complex than which
dozen applicants out of a pool of several hundred suitable candidates
can show up Monday morning ready to enter the program, with 72 hours',
or less, notice. Ideally that wouldn't happen, but the weather isn't the
only thing that changes minute by minute in the airline business.

There is no advantage in hiring from a pool of applicants whose
experience doesn't translate well to the new job description. Jet time
is good, turboprop time is OK, piston-time-only must be rare these days
among major airline pilot job applicants and, I'd bet, rarer still among
successful applicants. I believe the modern military turns out a product
better oriented to the standards of the Big Four, and their
hard-charging younger rivals, than do some of what you call "charter"
outfits, into which group get lumped some very unusual cats and dogs.

Long ago, in 1973, in my initial training class at what was then called
a "regional" airline, out of eight starters there were six who completed
training. The two who fell by the wayside each had a combination of at
least two of the following deficiencies: no turbine time; little
multi-engine time; very little IFR time/proficiency; a wife who was
causing trouble for her own reasons; and, no large aircraft time -- and
both were civilians. Out of the six successful hires, four were former
military (three, fighter) pilots, and the two remaining civilians had
multi-turbine time, IIRC. The moral of this story to me: that was a
qualification, interview, and review process that was in today's terms
substandard, but then represented the best that Co. could do under the
necessity to put enough warm bodies into the right seat on short notice.

It's good to have a mix of backgrounds in your pilot group, if only in
order to have a problem-solver for every type of problem, and it's
better yet to have a large pool of qualified applicants, do your
homework, choose the winners on the basis of proven success in areas
requiring the kind of abilities and expertise your crews actually use
every day, AND give them enough advance notice that the cream of the
crop can put everything else on hold and "be there."

These days, nobody's going anywhere, to speak of.


Jack