Tim, thank you for identifying yourself in posts, you have my respect, stop by my display at Oshkosh, I would like to shake your hand and buy you a coffee. Too few people in aviation conduct themselves with basic civility.
Mr. "Henning", consider this irony: You are incorrectly implying that my friend Jerry is trying to evade personal responsibility by blaming the machine. To my perspective, anyone you posts a public comment from the safety of a fake email name IS actually evading personal responsibility for their comments. People died to secure freedom of speech, perhaps the least we can do is use real name in exercising something that was bought for you as a very high priced gift. If your 33,000 posts in the last 10 years took two minutes each, that's 1100 hours of your life. I hope some of them had better content than the ones you have put here.
Running out of fuel is a dumb mistake, and it needs to happen less often. For that effect, the discussion needs to happen at a greater depth than saying things about teaspoons. The pilots that do it look a lot like the rest of us, so saying "don't fly with people visibly suffering from dementia" is not an adequate defensive strategy. Having more honest men speak plainly about the branch point in the decision tree where the took the wrong fork is going to be more effective than talking about teaspoons.
It is also ironic that anyone who's signature is followed by an anti-bureaucratic quote, or any person who is in favor of far less government or a person who has seen the FAA labyrinth...would then turn around and feel informed enough to pass harsh judgment on another airman, based on a single document produced by a highly bureaucratic branch of the government. If a two page bureaucratic report and one minute of local TV coverage is all that it takes to get people to condemn each other, things have gone a little far.
In 2001 I was a passenger in my own plane. The PIC made a mistake close to the ground and we crashed. I am covered in burn scars and skin grafts from my ankles to my forehead because I was soaked in fuel but went back to successfully extract the pilot. He made an honest mistake and apologized to my family for it. I forgave him and that ended it, no lawyers, lies or lawsuits. In the years since I have told hundreds of pilots the exact mistake sequence, and people have learned a lot more than speaking of dementia and teaspoons.
My website has a section called 'risk management reference page.' It has pictures and stories of many friends of mine, all dead now. Years ago I hoped that writing about them make me feel better, it didn't. Unless you are in the same position, it is hard to understand how thankful you might be that the list didn't get one name longer.
William Wynne
Orange Park FL.
