The blog is late this week but I have a good excuse. My wife left me. Oh, she’s coming back tomorrow, after a week at a retreat for church choir members (seems harmless enough), but it has been a rough week. Wives should leave more often, just so husbands will appreciate them more. I don’t know who misses her more—me or the dogs and cat.
AOPA interviewed a pilot who is in jail after he crashed his Stearman into a river, killing his passenger (go to http://www.aopa.org/members/files/pilot/2008/accident0807.html). He was jailed for only a 30-day sentence, but it raises many questions.
One of my first reactions to this story was that Ted Kennedy served no time at all for crashing his auto into a river, killing a passenger. His case seems to me to have involved far more egregious behavior than did the pilot’s accident.
The pilot was indeed guilty of bad behavior (all of this is only my opinion), but criminal behavior? He did knowingly break regs and the accident resulted because of that violation. Was this criminal? As Bill Clinton might have said, depends on the definition of criminal.
In cars, DUI is criminal by law and by custom and can bring jail time. Speeding and failure to stop at a stop sign seldom do. On the other hand, when they cause fatal accidents, both can bring liability lawsuits in the millions of dollars. So, can such suits be brought against pilots? (The pilot in question faces such a lawsuit right now.) We’re used to that and buy liability insurance to protect ourselves. But jail? You just can’t buy a “Get-Out-of-Jail-Free†card except in the game of Monopoly.
My non-flying friends seem to be in favor of the pilot going to jail. My flying friends vary all over the board between “hang him†and “no pilot should go to jail for an accident.†What do you think? AOPA would like to know (see their link above) and so would I.
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