There’s No Question…

And Possibly No Answer


There is an old adage I love that goes something like this:

It’s better to remain silent and let people assume that you might be stupid…

than to open your mouth, thereby removing all doubt.

This latest airline crash down in Miami, or rather, I should say, the news coverage thereof, could benefit from adherence to this train of thought (excuse the unintentional pun.)

I walked back into my house about 4:15 this afternoon to find FOX News showing aerial footage of the accident scene and interviews with eye witnesses and authorities in the area.

Within minutes I was cringing and wincing at the horror as I viewed the results of the accident, and I’m not talking about the loss of twenty lives including three infants when I say this.

What I’m referencing as “horrible” was the news coverage and associated live commentary of the incident that was even more disastrous than the details of the deaths.

Like the recent Gulfstream landing gear incident out in Oregon and the even more recent 737 runway incident at Chicago’s Midway airport, the reporting commentary was inane and down right irresponsible.

I think that there aught to be a law that when anything technical happens that is considered newsworthy, bad or good—things like air accidents and toaster oven explosions—that the media hierarchy should be required to send three quarters of their employees home for the day and use a generous portion of duct tape to cover the mouths of the other twenty five percent of their staff, being careful to leave their EARS uncovered so they can LISTEN before they start “REPORTING” on whatever news story they're doing their "reporting" about.

I, for one, want to hear NEWS, not the BS du jour.

Why supply a putrid stream of rumors, innuendo, and speculation, live and in color, for hours as the story develops and call it reporting? OK, show me the video of the scene, broadcast the news conference with “the authorities”, but spare me the blithering, inarticulate verbal essays from wetsuit clad “eyewitnesses”:

“Dude…It was flying real low, and then it blew up with a loud ‘boom’, then it was covered up with flame and it did three barrel rolls and a loop the loop and pieces started falling off before it almost landed on top of my surfboard.”

The persons responsible for such technically articulate commentary usually wouldn’t know an aileron from a rudder trim tab or an engine nacelle from a nosecone if one landed on the sofa beside them during the 11 o’clock news.

Most of the time they don't know what they were seeing when they saw it, and listening to some layman try to tell me about things like this never ceases to cause my eyes to glaze over and my hair to fall out of my ever balding head.

I don’t recall the “reporters” names, and during the press conferences they weren’t identified, but the factual evolution of the story in my opinion ran somewhere between comical and absurd.

First the airplane was postulated to have been returning to the US from some destination in the Bahamas so the fuel tanks should have been near empty and the reported explosion could “possibly” have been the result of a “bomb.”

Could it have been terrorism?

Well…Possibly, but not probably, even though the customs office at Walkers Cay and many other Bohemian points of origin consists of an open air hut under a Magnolia tree. In the end, it turned out that it had just taken off from the nearby Chalks Air water terminal heading for Bimini, Bahamas

The number of dead jumped repeatedly between 12 and 21. Does it really matter what the actual number of people that were killed is at this early point in the so called “reporting” of the story?

What I need to know is what they know is true…something like this:

“An airplane crashed near the beach in Miami in full view of hundreds if not thousands of eye witnesses. The airplane was a seaplane and, while it was believed to not be empty of passengers—we do KNOW that it had at least one person on board (the pilot) when it hit the water in an uncontrolled manner.”

At that point the reporters should just shut their stupid mouths. They should stop talking and do some actual investigating before they tell the public further details that turn out to be completely WRONG.

But Noooooooo—they can't do that

Instead, in an effort to get the “scoop,” to be the FIRST to say something, they seem to be willing to say ANYTHING and EVERYTHING.

After reporting that the airliner had exploded and lost a wing in midair, FOX News also reported that the pilot seemed to have “diverted” the aircraft at the last minute to avoid hitting a bunch of surfers and fishermen on the jetty at Government Cut.

WRONGGGGGG!

Neither Orville and Wilbur Wright, Amelia Airheart, The Red Barron, Billy Mitchel, or even Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne could have “diverted” a 20,000 pound wad of plummeting aluminum and steel after one wing falls off.

Those surfers and fishermen better all go home and hug their Mamas and wives and go to church this Sunday and thank God or Allah or somebody that they weren’t killed in the moments after that airplane stopped flying and starting acting like a big giant flaming rock.

Later in the afternoon and last evening the big story appears to have focused on the AGE of these old Grumman airplanes—averaging nearly 60 years.

“Yeah, they’re old airplanes, that’s the problem they say—Ohhhhhhhh Myyyyy”

I say, yes they were old…“so what?”

There are literally tens of thousands of old airplanes flying around out there every single day, all over the world. Some carry only the owner/pilot while others are routinely filled with paying passengers. Things like old DC-3’s that were built in the 1930’s and military C-130’s that also originated in the 1940’s.

It’s not the AGE of the airplane that matters as much as WHO is operating it and how it is MAINTAINED that makes a difference. If you buy a brand new Boeing 777 and park it out in the salt air at Miami International and ignore it for three months, then jump in and try to take off on your way to Las Vegas, I can almost guarnatee you that one engine probably won't run properly and that the working engine will be quite capable of taking you directly to the scene of the upcoming crash.

Chalks Ocean Air operates under FAR (Federal Aviation Regulations) Part 121 rather than the slightly more lenient FAR Part 135. FAR Part 121 governs the operations of all of the larger airline carriers flying the bigger airplanes like the Airbus and Boeing jets we all know and love.

For this reason, they are subject to the same pilot training and qualification standards and aircraft certification requirements as Delta Airlines. They can’t get away with paying just any old one eyed, bearded, beach bum, pilot wanna-be like me with an expired third class FAA medical certificate to grab the throttles and yolk and blast off into the “wild blue yonder.”

I did some checking with the NTSB Website just to see what Chalk Air’s safety record looked like, and it’s DAMN GOOD. They’ve actually been flying passengers since 1919, but they’ve only had 7_reportable incidents and they haven’t killed or injured anyone prior to yesterday’s crash according to the online records that have been kept since 1962.

Being an aviation enthusiast, I happen to know that Pan Am also flew the same Grummand G-73’s until they went bankrupt back in 1991. Chalks Air acquired their airplanes and before this accident, there are only EIGHT total fatalities reported in Grumman G-73’s and G-73T’s since 1962 (including Chalk Air’s operations.)

Get the picture?

The Grumman G-73’s and G-73T’s are OLD airplanes, but they are also SAFE airplanes. Age might have been the cause of this crash, but the media also needs to be looking at turbine engine failure and foreign object damage and any one of a thousand other causes…Stop worrying…

I’ve actually flown to Walker’s Cay Bahamas with this airline on this exact type of airplane, a 1948 Grumman Mallard, in 1997. We successfully landed and took back off from the ocean, and returned safely to Ft. Lauderdale without once causing me to believe that my life was in any kind of unacceptable danger.

These airplanes have been immaculately rebuilt and restored, with new modern turboprop engines replacing the old Pratt & Whitney radials (thus the G-73T versus the G-73 designation.)
The Chalks pilots get to wear kaki shorts and boat shoes with starched white shirts and Ray Ban sunglasses, and they pipe 1940’s period music into the passenger cabin on old fashioned headphones just to recreate the antique feel of getting to fly in an earlier era.

I loved every minute of the experience, and if I had to die in a plane crash I would rather it be on an old Grumman on my way to the Bahamas than on a 767 on my way to Cleveland or Milwaukee.

Please don’t misunderstand me here. Twenty souls dispatched at one time in a fiery trail of smoke ending in the ocean is a first class tragedy for the individuals and their families. It’s a loss that deserves a thorough investigation in order to prevent it happening again—IF that is possible.

My heart goes out to the victims and their families, but my ears and eyes can also be considered to be the weary victims of the hyperbolic phenomena that we call the MAINSTREAM MEDIA.

I offer a hearty “Bah Humbug” to all of the media, including FOX News.

Now Watch every single aircraft incident that occurrs in the next few days jump to the front pages of newspapers and into your living room on the TV every night, even though an average of 116 people will die each day in auto accidents and probably won’t get an ounce of ink or video time on the evening news, except on an individual local basis.

Get a GRIP, people…