Shades of WTC

“You guys hear about the 15 year old kid, that crashed a Cessna into a Bank of America building in Florida?

Seems like he ignored the hand signals of a pilot, of a U.S coast guard helicopter. He didn't reply to the air traffic controller either. Maybe it was a copycat suicide.

This is really not helping the U.S airlines industry, and it's not restoring the confidence of the public.”

“15??????Man there are just too many nutty people in the world...:|


Crazy Mike”

“Well, someone on a suicide mission probably doesn't care about hand signals of a pilot in another aircraft. Also, intercept signals are not well known by pilots in general aviation mainly because they aren't part of the required FAA curriculm to become an FAA certificated pilot.

The press is doing a very poor job of providing subjective coverage, mainly because of their lack of knowledge of the general aviation industry. The so-called experts they've been interviewing are truly inept in their knowledge, but know just enough to allow the interviewers enough lattitude to spin the answers in their favor. The press is preying on the general public's lack of knowledge of aviation and inciting alot of fear in the process. I won't go into any more detail because I could write a thesis on the subject and won't bore you.

signed,
FAA Certified Flight Instructor,(CFI, CFII, MEI)”

“Please answer one question for me. Just how much flight training could a 15 year old have? Could he have understood the signals at all? And I agree about them not being effective in a suicide situation anyway.”

“That is a good question?

Crazy Mike”

“Foxnews is circulating a story that he had a sympathy note for bin Laden on him when he crashed the plane.”

“I'm afraid I don't trust any news organization that would hire Geraldo Rivera. Just my personal opinion.”

“A 15 year old can have as much flight training as Mom and/or Dad are willing to pay. However, that same 15 year old cannot fly by himself(solo) in an airplane until he reaches the age of 16 and cannot take the FAA flight exam to receive a pilot certificate until the age of 17.”

“I see. I was wondering how he would be able to steal a plane and go for a joy ride. It's not exactly like driving a car.”

“I don't know the details that led up to the flight, but if this flight was supposed to be a flight lesson a typical scenario would go as follows.

Student shows up to fly with the instructor and the instructor advises the student to get the flight log and aircraft keys and go out to the ramp and begin performing a preflight inspection. (This is a very typcial scenario) The instructor, typically, would meet the student at the plane a few to several minutes later when the student would be expected to almost be finished with the preflight inspection. If the 15 year old had alterior motives for this flight, he could have easily skipped the inspection and just hopped in the plane, started it, taxied, and took off within the same amount of time it would have taken to do the preflight inspection. I don't know if this is how the student did it, but it would be the most likely scenario.

No, it's not like stealing a car, but airplanes are not that difficult to learn fly, especially takeoffs and straight-and-level flight, as long as the winds are light to calm. It may appear to those not exposed to the aviation community that it takes a Chuck Yeager to fly, but that's far from the truth.

"...keep the shiny up and the dirty side down..."”

“I think the world is just going to nutz for me right now.

Crazy Mike

15 that is just crazy!!!!!!!”

“Remember Columbine?”

“Treebait that's what I just heard about the letter sympatizing Osama.

One of my associates (an airline pilot) also told me it's actually easier to fly a plane than drive a car...as long as there's no terrible weather.

I wondered what would have happened, if those 2 jet fighters had arrived in time...shoot the kid down?”

“Thank you Cairn. Those questions had been bugging me all day and they just weren't being addressed by the media sources. I think this is incredibly sad, and my sympathies are with the family.”

“I agree, it's a very sad story. This was one very disturbed teen. I suspect that this is just the tip of the iceberg the WTC disaster may have spawned a whole new fad/genre of suicide method.”