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?