AIRPLANE ACCIDENT IN NEW YORK CITY II

That accident really got my creative juices going.
No matter how hard I try, I can't ignore the television coverage of the accident. They are to be commended with the speed with which they arrived at the scene and started on site coverage. This was truly timely and on site news coverage.
But there was certainly something lacking in the knowledge of the people they were interviewing. They must have been waiting in the closet to be interviewed. There were former heads of the NTSB who demonstrated there lack of knowledge about anything aviation. There were nothing but political appointees and bureaucrats. It is no wonder D.C. is so screwed up if this is the caliber of people who are running our Government. There was the Representative from Brooklyn, who is well known for his condemning the present administration for their use of harsh methods of interrogation and their use of wiretapping because we are depriving our enemies of rights. Rights that they never had. These things save the lives of our troops and our countrymen. But he was very quick to suggest the curtailing of private airplane traffic. This is akin to banning cars from a road if there is an accident on that road. At that rate they would have to shut down all New York City. None of the people ever metioned anything about LGA's TCA.
All the networks had to do was go to Teterboro Airport and interview a flight instructor and they would have had the full story.
Kudo's to Mayor Bloomberg, who waited until he had the facts of the accident and who demonstrated his knowlegde of aviation affairs around his city.

AIRPLANE ACCIDENT IN NEW YORK CITY

The airplane accident in NYC on Wednesday brought back a flood of memories. Back to when we were flying for New York Airways. New York Airways was a shuttle service that flew passengers, mail and cargo between the major airports in the New York city area.
Back to when we were flying S-55's, S-58's and Vertol 44's. All single engine helicopters. The helicopters had floats so we could land at the riverfront heliports in the city. We had to fly certain routes and altitudes so we always had an emergency landing area in the event of an engine failure or other mechanical problem. If you had an engine failure, you had less than a minute to land the helicopter. Believe me, it is an exciting ride. It would take about 10 minutes to go from LGa to JFK and about 20 minutes to go from LGA to EWR. There were always delays, so you never were able to get out of the helicopter except when you ere fueling. There was no air conditioning and very little heat so you roasted during the summers and froze during the winters. All the flying was VFR so you had to be careful of the weather. You generally flew about 12 to 15 days a month.
As the technology improved, so did our helicopters. We flew Sikorsky 61's and Vertol 107's. They both had two turbine engines and carried up to 25 passengers. With their increased speed and twin engine capabilities, we were able to cut our enroute times in half and reduce our weather minimums. This did not ease our day as we just flew more trips. It enabled us increase our utilization of the NY heliports. We opened the heliport on the top of the Pan Am building in Manhattan.
For several years we also flew De Haviland Twin Otter airplanes between the airports.
These carried between 18 to 20 passengers. They had short takeoff and landing capability, so we did not use he same runways as the larger aircraft but rather special shorter runways away from the regular aircraft traffic. This was an interesting break from the helicopters.
The flying was very intense. We were always in an airport control zone and were in constant radio contact with the control towers and the company. We flew in and out of the airports so much that we developed a rapore with the controllers. We recognized their voices as I am sure they recognized our voices. We did not land on runways but rather used taxiway intersections for our landing zones. This meant that we had to be aware of taxiing aircraft and coordinate all our movements with the ground controller. We had to be careful of the prop and jet blasts from taxiing airplanes.
There was an element of physical risk involved. During my 22 years flying for NYA, there were 5 accidents that involved fatalities.
With a lot of things in life......While I was doing it, it sure was a tough way to earn a living....but I sure missed it when it was over.
Here are a couple of pictures of our aircraft.

I'M CONFUSED

Maybe its my advanced age and my loss of abity to think things thru, but I am definately confused. I think back 50 years and I wonder if the world was as messed up then as it is now, but we just didn't know about it.
I look at the political scene and see Congressmen and Governers resigning amid charges of homosexuality. I see Senators going to jail for taking bribes. I see a complete inability for the political parties to get together to pass any meaningful legislation. There is just a grab for power to the detriment of the people. The only time they get together is when they are passing bills passing their pork barrel projects. I remember when a political party would ask someone to run for office after they had demonstrated their ability thru community projects or holding a lower position. In Florida we have a woman running for Senator who I wouldn't want on the school board. Her only qualification is being wealthy.
I look at the press and see a total one sided coverage. They slant facts and don't care about the effect any of their reporting. They do not care if any of our troops are killed because of their leaking information. They care more for the life of an animal than they do for our troops. There are more unqualified people writing books depicting themselves as experts.
I look at the so called war against terrorism and remember back to WW11. A nation is at war when all of its citizens are involved. Back then we had the draft, we had rationing. We had everyone contributing something. We had Patriotism. Today we have a booming economy and the only reference to the war is on page 8 of the newspaper when they report how many of our boys were killed.
Today we have the internet. Everyone has a cell phone. Even children in grammer school. Soon I exoect that it will be against the law to drive without one to your ear. The people have never heard of the concept of saving to buy something. Everything is now and on credit. We are building a big bubble of debt. I hope it doesn't burst.
I am confused and worried about the workd we are leaving our grand children. I pray that they have as good a life as I have had.