What's Up - March 2010

Larry ShapiroW O R D S!

By Larry Shapiro

Words: they’re amazing little tools and they can be used so many different ways, some good and some bad.

I started this column a few weeks back as I was thinking how confusing some words in the English language could be.  I am in awe of how well the exchange students who stay with us know and use our language. In retrospect I would probably fail if English were going to be my second or third language. 

I initially was going to use words like, “pretty” and “ugly.”  We’ve all heard, “wow that was pretty ugly.”  See what I mean?

Now because of two particular aviation incidents that occurred in the past few weeks, and yes, I know there were more, words still seem to be very confusing to our friends and neighbors outside the aviation community.  What does IFR mean to them?  What does a standard departure or approach mean?  I won’t even try to explain minimums.  The hardest question:  Why did he take off? It was so foggy!

At best, these incidents were terrible, but on the good side… no lives were lost on the ground, although I’m not sure about the Texas one.  The good part was that only the passengers on board were killed.  See what I mean?  And my point becomes relatively clear as I share with you the two crashes that filled the headlines coast to coast.

Messages
Let’s start with some words once given to me by the late great Vernon Dalman Jr.  I can only describe Vern as the great Waldo Pepper and Willie Wonka rolled in to one person. He lived on his ranch with his paved 3,000-foot runway and a collection of museum quality airplanes, the only difference being he actually flew his.  He always talked about taking me for a ride in his Speed Wing, but he never landed with passengers on board. (Huh?)  He said it was the hardest airplane to land so he only took skydivers up and they had to supply their own way down.

There I go again; someone needs to tie me to the point I was trying to make.  Anyway, Vern used to say, “Accidents don’t just happen. Messages sent but the pilots don’t open their mail.”  I have found this to be true time after time and have yet to find an exception.

So!  This now brings us to incident one.  As writers like to say: it was a dark and foggy morning.  I was preparing to go fishing when I walked out of my garage and realized I couldn’t see the houses across my street.  Hummm, naaaah, this isn’t an emergency fishing trip. I can wait another hour to leave.  Ya see, I got the message and opened it.  I called the dudes I was going with and suggested we wait another hour because of the fog.  They agreed and life when on… for some of us.

When I did leave and as I was passing PAO, it was within five minutes of what happened below.  I also want to mention that if, and let me say that again, if the aircraft had been on the standard IFR depart heading of 060, it would have made the local news and that would have been that.  Since lives were lost, we made the news coast-to-coast.

few miles down the road three of my airport friends had climbed into a very sweet Cessna 310 and didn’t open their mail.  What should have been a simple and standard IFR departure out over the Bay went terribly wrong.  Somehow this pilot and passengers zigged when they should have zagged.  Why did they do this? I hope some day we will know, but right now we don’t.

Fault & Responsibility
Here are some of the hard parts to reckon with: Was our airport at fault?  The answer is no.  Is our airport responsible for this? Again, the answer is no.  Does our airport community feel terrible about this? The answer is absolutely yes.  Our usually magnificent seven, (The board of the PAAA), were on deck minutes, hours, and days following this tragedy and still are.  Donation funds were established almost immediately.  Work vehicles that were destroyed were being replaced through donations and cleaning up the incident debris has been on going.

One more very important item: our neighbors, G-d bless them, did not bad-mouth our airport and only expressed remorse for the three lost lives.  Bravo East Palo Alto! As neighbors, you are the best.

Six Degrees
With this said, let me give you some examples of those spooky six degrees of separation we sometimes talk about.  The 310 skidded down the middle of the street.  Yes, it did destroy some cars; lives are worth more than cars.  Yes some houses got a little broken and burned, and yes, the airplane did come to rest on a newly built childcare center. 

Here come some those six degrees; the house had been built by Habitat for Humanity… my best friend Joel worked on that house.  The house was run by one of my wife’s patients.  One of the 310 passengers lived just two blocks away from the crash scene.  So close and yet so far away – gives me goose bumps.  Once again I love the words we use.  Also, the three lost souls worked for the same new and small company, and one of my closet friends just went to work for the same company.  For most of the day we didn’t know if he was on board.  It has continued to amaze us how many people, not even near our airport were affected.
Try this one on and I swear on a Bible and the heads of my grandchildren this is true:  My friend Buzzie was at the Stanford Hospital a couple of miles down the road to get a small medical procedure done before she left for Italy for nine months. 

This was the last thing she needed to do before packing and saw no problem ahead for her.  As they prepped her, the lights went out due to the 310 taking out a major power line.  Okay, so that’s not the end of the world, but here’s what happened next.  She was to leave on Tuesday, Feb. 23.  Off she went back to the hospital to have the procedure that got canceled due to our incident.  Things didn’t go exactly right this time so she was rescheduled to go back on Monday night, Feb. 22.

This would be a good time to mention she had to be at SFO at 05:45 Tuesday (the next day).  Now her doc says, hummm, I’m sure you’ll be able to fly.  She did fly, and not that it matters, I picked her up and found she lived in a house I owned 30 years ago.  One more thing, I am keeping her car for her while she’s gone and it’s identical to my wife’s and was tuned to the same radio station.  Okay, enough said.

So much has already been done and is continuing to be done to help our neighbors and no time is needed or will be used to protect our airport: it’s not necessary.  Our association officers immediately put out some “suggestions” that should keep this from ever happening again.  BTW, since we opened PAO, this has never happened and I believe we turned on the lights back in the year 1930-something.

I suppose it would be only right to mention the lunatic that used his Piper to kill himself and injure many more.  The fact that he set his house on fire with his wife and son still inside, only proves once again, messages were sent and once again the mail wasn’t opened.  Once again this wasn’t the fault or responsibility of his airport.  Will someone make sure the good folks at TSA read and heed this.  We don’t need more fences or higher ones.

For now we would ask for your prayers for the families or the deceased 310 folks.  We would ask that you keep our neighbors in your thoughts.  When that is done, invite some friends over for corned beef and cabbage and be glad you can do that.

Happy St. Patty’s Day

Finally, if it doesn’t look right, if it doesn’t feel right, and especially if it doesn’t sound right… don’t do it.  Read your messages and take them seriously.  In the spirit of safe aviating…

“Over”