From: utzoo!decvax!cca!csin!cjh@CCA-UNIX@sri-unix Newsgroups: net.aviation Title: re WSJ articles Article-I.D.: sri-unix.2446 Posted: Wed Aug 4 16:40:47 1982 Received: Thu Aug 5 05:22:12 1982 I would like to see what factual bones you have to pick with these 2.5 articles. I have not been an active pilot for some time, but I don't see anything new or improbable about what is said here---certainly airplane manufacturers, like car manufacturers, don't try to sell safety in their personal-size products, and certainly many pilots fall into the general category of "ragged individualists", unwilling to accept any degree of guidance or control. (Even at Hanscom (Bedford MA), which in my day was almost as busy as Logan (BOS) (200,000+ movements annually in the early 70's) the standards were not nearly what they should have been; noise regulations specified that main-runway downwind legs were to be flown over the base main street, a good half-mile from the runway, but I saw several problems from people flying far outside this pattern from simple sloppiness.) I very much doubt that most pilots had the degree of attention my training got; I took almost 80 hours to get a private license and considered them all well-spent. I also started immediately on an instrument rating, and picked one up in just over the minimum total hours---with at least 15 hours of actual thanks to an instructor who flew DC-9's for Delta. And I don't consider any of that time wasted. The only possible question I can see in those articles is the statistics, and WSJ is usually good about those. Do you have some alternate figures, or are you just objecting to their calling a spade a spade?