Yes this in the wrong place. Wait….What….I’m not an Admin!


The real message here is responsibility and commitment.

As a pilot (I’m not licensed) you need certain boundaries. First you must follow a set of rules established for you. There can be no wiggle room here. Train with someone who is equally committed to positive results. Foolishness has no place and neither does irresponsibility. It is totally sad. The parents indulged their child. They should have seen this coming but their eyes were closed or they were blind. Several years ago, I chose to become a pharmacist. My parents were glad I chose a career but school was demanding and snatched my personal time. When licensed I became firmly entrenched with responsibilities and needed to remain committed to my career.
I have been licensed for over 35 years never forgetting my initial commitments to patients.
As a pilot my first lesson was a birthday gift from my wife. We both got a chance to pilot a Piper Cherokee. It is fun but the learning takes time. When I am instrument rated for a Cherokee I will move on to an Apatche. I don’t want to be a licensed commercial pilot but I have plans to develop an aviation curriculum at my former high school.

I watch several reports of plane accidents. Yesterday I watched an analysis of a crash that killed two young men. The young pilot was more interested in the prestige factor of being a pilot, taking lots of selfies while being instructed. His instructor managed to get him to settle down, somewhat. Eventually, the instructor quit when the boy showed up with alcohol on his breath. The flying school dropped him.

What to do? Simple. The father bought his son a plane and found another instructor. Although he had gotten some kind of certificate, he had restrictions because of his lack of experience - no passengers, for example. Well, around 3:30 on morning, he and a friend drove to the airport and took off on a dark, cloudy night - not far from a military Air Force base. He never used the radio despite being called several times by the Air Force base. Flying in dark, cloudy skies, he eventually spiraled into the ground, killing himself and his 19-year-old friend.

Everything was wrong with this story. The kid was irresponsible, and the father supported him by finding different instructors as one after another quit and then buying him a plane. Imagine the parents waking up in the morning and learning that their son had crashed and killed himself.

This analysis was on "Pilot Debrief" on YouTube. Hoover gives a good analysis of crashes, often pointing out shortcomings in the investigation. He's a former F-15 pilot.