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wow one after another, whats next?


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Unfortunately this stuff happens. One of my co-workers moved to New Hampshire. She and her husband were going through a divorce and it got ugly. When he was served with a restraining order, this happened:

https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/ReportGeneratorFile.ashx?EventID=20010905X01883&AKey=1&RType=HTML&IType=LA


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I’m still very surprised that the fighter jets did not flame that commuter plane in Washington. To me that was a lapse of judgment. They had no idea what he was going to do. Had plenty of opportunity to do it over Puget Sound.

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I’m still very surprised that the fighter jets did not flame that commuter plane in Washington. To me that was a lapse of judgment. They had no idea what he was going to do. Had plenty of opportunity to do it over Puget Sound.


It would have set a precedent in this country if they did. My guess is that the lines of communication with the pilot were there and they were probably locked and loaded if the conversation indicated he was going to take people out.


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I for one am very happy they didn't shoot down the Q400 in Seattle. There is way too much preemptive killing of people already. And as it turned out, it was just fine that they didn't.

Kudos to the controller who very calmly talked to the guy and kept him out of harms way and never gave up trying to talk him down. 

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31 minutes ago, gsxrpilot said:

I for one am very happy they didn't shoot down the Q400 in Seattle. There is way too much preemptive killing of people already. And as it turned out, it was just fine that they didn't.

Kudos to the controller who very calmly talked to the guy and kept him out of harms way and never gave up trying to talk him down. 

Interesting response.  What examples of “preemptive killing” are you referring to?  This incident did NOT result in property damage or loss of life beyond the aircraft and individual.  If he had flown the plane into a large gathering would that impact your comment?

My question is: “What security protocol breaches resulted in the theft and launch of the aircraft from a commercial airport”?  Maybe these should be “fixed” to minimize likelihood of a recurrence.

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2 hours ago, Bravoman said:

I’m still very surprised that the fighter jets did not flame that commuter plane in Washington. To me that was a lapse of judgment. They had no idea what he was going to do. Had plenty of opportunity to do it over Puget Sound.

I believe it is illegal for the US military to shoot down a US civilian aircraft. 

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Military commanders acknowledge that there are specific triggers for destroying civilian aircraft, but they will not disclose them. Presumably they involve several factors, from type of aircraft to flight path to behavior of the pilot. “There are very detailed rules of engagement to which we train on a routine basis,” Paul McHale, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, told the Defense Writers Group in 2005. He stressed that any decision to fire would not be made by the pursuing military pilots or their immediate handlers at Rome. “The authority to shoot down a civilian aircraft is delegated to a very small number of very senior officials, civilian and military, within the Department of Defense,” McHale said.

The GAO’s D’Agostino assumes the circle is smaller still. “It would have to be the president or the Sec Def making the decision,” she says, employing Beltway-speak for the Secretary of Defense. “The U.S. military does not relish the thought of shooting down civilians.”


Read more at:

https://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/dont-cross-that-line-5841988/#glVYxvE4zohz8hgg.99

 

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1 hour ago, MIm20c said:

@N201MKTurbo

I wonder if those rules of engagement would be the same for a fully loaded passenger aircraft vs a single pilot or small aircraft?

By shooting down an airplane you are just making it crash then and there not somewhere else.

If you knew the plane was hell bent on mass destruction it would make the decision easier, but when would you know that for sure? 

If they had enough inelegance to know that, I would hope they would stop it before the plane took off.

And on 911, the planes were full of innocent people. Would you want to pull the trigger on that one? 

Edited by N201MKTurbo
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Here's an old "Flying" magazine article reprinted by NPR on "Suicide by Airplane"

An interesting quote from the article (dated 2005):

"Some end their lives with a kamikaze attack on their own home or an estranged wife or girlfriend's. (In the past 15 years all the pilots who have committed suicide by flying into buildings have been men.)"

I should also point out that I think GA pilots are more likely to commit suicide than the average population, since they consist disproportionately of white males over the age of 65 (one of the highest risk groups).  Obviously, suicide by airplane is not the most common method in that group--that would be suicide by gun.

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I think the mental health issues facing pilots is very real. Although I’m not a psychiatrist, I did marry one and we’ve talked about it quite a bit. Based on my experience, I would say some of the risk factors for suicide (like impulsivity) are probably over-represented in the GA population. As was just pointed out by @jaylw314 some of the traditional risk factors for suicide are also over-represented in the pilot population (https://www.mdedge.com/psychiatry/article/59790/depression/revised-sad-persons-helps-assess-suicide-risk)

Maybe a useful outcome from this tragedy would be to discuss how we can help each other with mental health challenges since, statistically, many of us have them. There was recently someone here who posted that he carried a handgun on every flight so he could commit suicide if he was going to crash. The response to that was pretty disappointing. Even if it’s just a joke (which he later clarified it wasn’t) it’s not very funny.

Not to get on a soapbox, but I’ve seen lots of suicide attempts, some of them successful. I deal with suicidal people on an almost daily basis. If we don’t do a better job addressing mental health issues in the GA community, me fear is that someone else will do it for us and probably not in very desirable way.

 

edit: corrected link

Edited by ilovecornfields
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59 minutes ago, ilovecornfields said:

I think the mental health issues facing pilots is very real. Although I’m not a psychiatrist, I did marry one and we’ve talked about it quite a bit. Based on my experience, I would say some of the risk factors for suicide (like impulsivity) are probably over-represented in the GA population. As was just pointed out by @jaylw314 some of the traditional risk factors for suicide are also over-represented in the pilot population (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAD_PERSONS_scale).

Maybe a useful outcome from this tragedy would be to discuss how we can help each other with mental health challenges since, statistically, many of us have them. There was recently someone here who posted that he carried a handgun on every flight so he could commit suicide if he was going to crash. The response to that was pretty disappointing. Even if it’s just a joke (which he later clarified it wasn’t) it’s not very funny.

Not to get on a soapbox, but I’ve seen lots of suicide attempts, some of them successful. I deal with suicidal people on an almost daily basis. If we don’t do a better job addressing mental health issues in the GA community, me fear is that someone else will do it for us and probably not in very desirable way.

FYI the link to the Wikipedia is incorrect, but I found what you were pointing at :)

One of the problems in mental health is that we still lack information to predict suicide even if we know the risk factors.  It ends making risk factor analysis after the fact more of an academic exercise than anything helpful.

We have even less medical knowledge about people who commit homicide or suicide-homicide.  There's still plenty of debate (or just flat-out lack of information) about whether this is distinct from the information about textbook suicide.

I have my own opinions on the differences, but those are almost, but not quite, complete wild-assed guesses.

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59 minutes ago, N201MKTurbo said:

Maybe as pilots we just have another tool in our suicide toolbox.

I guess it depends on weather you want to go quietly or in a blaze of glory!

I personally plan on dying from a hart attack while riding my bicycle in a race when I'm 110 or so. 

Having had your heart replaced with a hart, I’m sure you’ll make it to 110!

Clarence

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11 hours ago, gsxrpilot said:

I for one am very happy they didn't shoot down the Q400 in Seattle. There is way too much preemptive killing of people already. And as it turned out, it was just fine that they didn't.

Kudos to the controller who very calmly talked to the guy and kept him out of harms way and never gave up trying to talk him down. 

That is purely retrospective thinking. Given the risk to a potentially large number of innocent people and the uncertainty involved and the window of opportunity to abate the risk over an unpopulated area it was a poor decision. If it ended differently the government would have drawn a lot of flak( no pun intended).

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Interesting enough shooting a civilian plane down would be a pretty clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.  So it is probably not to be taken lightly.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act    

Also just cause you missile or gun the plane down it would be really hard to tell that it would not land on some person or the gun fire would not take out an innocent bystander watching from their lake cabin.  I think they were trying to work him out over the ocean.   It was interesting that the controller was trying to get him down or do other things, he would just say "yeah" and keep with his plan.

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