Alexb2000
En-Route
Deleted- thanks for the responses
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Crash close to home in Taos
- Thread starter Alexb2000
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DouglasBader
Line Up and Wait
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- Apr 11, 2012
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Doug
I lose friends and associates every year, and though I have a long list of dead friends in aviation, it's not something one ever becomes accustomed to or takes lightly.
Every time is another moment for some inward searching, a review of one's own practices and procedures, and a reminder that there before the grace go we all.
A cub will kill just as surely as an F18; perhaps just a little more slowly, but the end result is the same.
Several years ago I reviewed my older logbooks, which are a lot like journals or scrapbooks, with pictures, all my medicals and government cards glued inside, and so on. Business cards are stuck in the margins, moments, etc. I began doing some checking on various airplanes I flew, and found that a surprising number of them were no longer around. Some I had known about, some I didn't. They ranged from a rental that a kid committed suicide in, to violent breakups during a rejected takeoff, to various other causes. Many of the companies for whom I've flown have passed on too, and are no longer in business.
It's the transitory nature of aviation. A deadly, severe thunderstorm exists one moment, and is gone the next. We depart a warm, dry climate and experience severe icing shortly thereafter, and not long after that are back in a safe room with a comfortable couch again. We are employed in the business one day, and unemployed the next...the company has downsized, gone out of business, closed the flight department, furloughed, etc. Our friends are alive, then they are dead. I can still hear a friend's South African accent as though he's standing next to me, though I know he died a few years ago fighting a fire in Colorado. I didn't take his number out of my cell for a long time after that, and one day accidentally dialed it by mistake. His phone was still in service, and I got his voice mail, telling me in the same old familiar way to leave a message, he'd get back to me. Chills.
Years ago a friend approached me about buying an ultralight. He wanted a way to motivate his son to become an eagle scout, and he couldn't afford to learn to fly a conventional airplane, or to buy one. He could afford an ultralight, though, and sought my advice on where to go to start. I gave him a few names at the time, and we talked about his choices.
I was getting ready one morning to head out the door, listening to the radio, when I heard his name associated with a news report of a fatal inflight failure at the local airport. He was dead, and the owner/designer/builder of the experimental that they were demo flying was dead also. They had a ballistic parachute, but it didn't properly deploy. I was supposed to be there at the time to fly a new Mooney that the flying club just got. I couldn't make it. I often felt that if only I'd been there, I could somehow have warned him. Maybe. I'll never know.
I went to the viewing, and then later the funeral. At the viewing, I mostly studied my feet. I didn't feel like talking. I didn't know most of the people there. I moved through the line, numbly offering condolences, shaking hands, until I arrived at the last man before the casket. I looked up into the face of my friend, who was dead, as he shook my hand. I looked to the casket, and there he lay. Nobody ever told me that he had a twin brother.
Friends have died in inflight break-ups, parachute failures, and fires. Friends have been struck by propellers, have foolishly run out of fuel, have flown into weather when they shouldn't, and died. It happens. Some are inevitable, some are truly tragic, some we all should have seen coming, and some were so preventable it's maddening to imagine how it ever occurred.
If the loss of a friend or associate gives you pause, then your mind is in the right place, and it's appropriate to do so. Grieve. Recall. Ponder. Think. Pray. Remember. Learn.
And move on.
It won't be the last.
Every time is another moment for some inward searching, a review of one's own practices and procedures, and a reminder that there before the grace go we all.
A cub will kill just as surely as an F18; perhaps just a little more slowly, but the end result is the same.
Several years ago I reviewed my older logbooks, which are a lot like journals or scrapbooks, with pictures, all my medicals and government cards glued inside, and so on. Business cards are stuck in the margins, moments, etc. I began doing some checking on various airplanes I flew, and found that a surprising number of them were no longer around. Some I had known about, some I didn't. They ranged from a rental that a kid committed suicide in, to violent breakups during a rejected takeoff, to various other causes. Many of the companies for whom I've flown have passed on too, and are no longer in business.
It's the transitory nature of aviation. A deadly, severe thunderstorm exists one moment, and is gone the next. We depart a warm, dry climate and experience severe icing shortly thereafter, and not long after that are back in a safe room with a comfortable couch again. We are employed in the business one day, and unemployed the next...the company has downsized, gone out of business, closed the flight department, furloughed, etc. Our friends are alive, then they are dead. I can still hear a friend's South African accent as though he's standing next to me, though I know he died a few years ago fighting a fire in Colorado. I didn't take his number out of my cell for a long time after that, and one day accidentally dialed it by mistake. His phone was still in service, and I got his voice mail, telling me in the same old familiar way to leave a message, he'd get back to me. Chills.
Years ago a friend approached me about buying an ultralight. He wanted a way to motivate his son to become an eagle scout, and he couldn't afford to learn to fly a conventional airplane, or to buy one. He could afford an ultralight, though, and sought my advice on where to go to start. I gave him a few names at the time, and we talked about his choices.
I was getting ready one morning to head out the door, listening to the radio, when I heard his name associated with a news report of a fatal inflight failure at the local airport. He was dead, and the owner/designer/builder of the experimental that they were demo flying was dead also. They had a ballistic parachute, but it didn't properly deploy. I was supposed to be there at the time to fly a new Mooney that the flying club just got. I couldn't make it. I often felt that if only I'd been there, I could somehow have warned him. Maybe. I'll never know.
I went to the viewing, and then later the funeral. At the viewing, I mostly studied my feet. I didn't feel like talking. I didn't know most of the people there. I moved through the line, numbly offering condolences, shaking hands, until I arrived at the last man before the casket. I looked up into the face of my friend, who was dead, as he shook my hand. I looked to the casket, and there he lay. Nobody ever told me that he had a twin brother.
Friends have died in inflight break-ups, parachute failures, and fires. Friends have been struck by propellers, have foolishly run out of fuel, have flown into weather when they shouldn't, and died. It happens. Some are inevitable, some are truly tragic, some we all should have seen coming, and some were so preventable it's maddening to imagine how it ever occurred.
If the loss of a friend or associate gives you pause, then your mind is in the right place, and it's appropriate to do so. Grieve. Recall. Ponder. Think. Pray. Remember. Learn.
And move on.
It won't be the last.