As I've mentioned here earlier on this blog, I don't fly that much anymore...commercial or private or otherwise...
Besides the risk of my arms getting really tired while flapping furiously...
the FAA, in their infinite wisdom, cut my career as a Licensed Private Pilot short when they found out that I had a blood disorder which caused me to take an anticoagulant drug called Coumadin to prevent blood clots in my legs, and I guess they were afraid that when and IF I ever managed to crash a Piper or Cessna fixed wing aircraft they wouldn't want to have to come out and explain in the news article why all of the blood rushed out of my body when the propeller cut my head off in the "uncontrolled contact with terrain event."
The FAA, being a Government Agency, and always looking for something and someone to regulate (because that is what Government Agencies are in charge of doing), thinks a guy that is usually slightly insane administratively uses, instead of my insanity, my hyper-coagulative blood as a reason to stop me from doing something I infinitely enjoyed doing just BECAUSE...
Thus I haven't been in a cockpit at the controls of an airplane solo since the early 1990's (if you've never accomplished that feat let me tell you it exceeds anything else any human can ever accomplish in my opinion.)
Long before my days taking flight lessons, my Father was also an avid Aviator.
He rented an airplane and took me up on my first intro flight for my 8th birthday. We enjoyed a love of aviation together although most of his working career he couldn't tell me and the rest of his own family what he was doing because the work out at Cairns Army Airfield at Ft. Rucker, Alabama was either SECRET or TOP SECRET.
At least CLASSIFIED.
Once he grew up and stopped limiting himself to just doing things like building and flying control line and free flight and radio controlled MODEL airplanes, he graduated from the University of Kentucky in the Army ROTC program and joined the US Army Signal Corps in the mid 1950's and immediately went to flight school.
By the time his career was over he had logged thousands of hours in the air and he held private pilot, instrument, multi-engine, air transport, and helicopter licenses.
As a Army Test Pilot, he never once crashed an airplane (or a car for that matter although a cow once ran into the side of our 1968 Chevy Nomad Station Wagon...but that's another entirely different blog posting I need to write sometime.)
Any way...One thing that he could talk about, which is the subject of my posting this morning, is the public's mis-understanding of the reason why we are asked to turn off all electronic devices on commercial air liners while in flight or at least during the take off and landing portion of any given journey.
You see, much of my Dad's career was spent testing the interaction of electronics in the cockpit of aircraft as technology rapidly advanced in the 1960's and early 1970's.
All of the "doo-dads" and gauges and bells and whistles which we take for granted in the cockpit really don't like to get along with each other. Thus today smart people designing Airplanes and Helicopters know that every single possible configuration of "avionics" has to be tested and re-tested in order to verify that everyone can get along well when the pilot(s) are depending on the readings and information they are delivering.
Imagine the complexity added when you have an airplane which not only has it's own "suite" of fancy radios and GPS and airspeed indicators, but then you add 250 passengers each wielding a cell phone and laptop computer and I-pad and God knows what else?
That said, articles like this one drive me a little crazy because just like people who insist on driving and texting, we live in a population of
CD player...
DVD Player...
Laptop Computer with Solitaire Card Game...
I-Pod...
I-Phone...
I-Pad...
CAN'T YOU GIVE THIS CRAP A REST...FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS...PEOPLE???
Why not get on an airliner, sit down, close your eyes, and not make a single noise for two hours?
Give the rest of us a freaking break, won't you?
Let me not have to listen to your inane cell phone conversation with whoever telling them crap that you could tell them once we're safely back at the jet way awaiting the cabin doors to be re-opened.
And while you are at it, why not stay in your seat rather than leaping up as soon as the plane parks and standing with your ass in my face for five minutes while all of the other people in front of you rush to get off of the plane?
Are you actually that IMPORTANT?
I swear that one of the places I'm most likely to get arrested between now and the end of my life is somewhere inside or around a Commercial Airliner.
Not for being a terrorist...
For being a VIGILANTE.
For kicking someone's stupid ass...
(And the crowd will applaud me as they lead me away in handcuffs...)
...taking a big breath here...
I guess that that will be all...For Now...
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