It’s not often that I come up against a better man then me, but today I am humbled before one.
As many of you know, an F-18 fighter plane lost it’s engines and crashed in San Diego yesterday. The pilot ejected and survived, but the plane crashed into a house killing an infant, a toddler, their mother and their grandmother. The sole survivor of this tragedy, the father of the kids, the husband of the woman who was killed, had this to say about the accident and the pilot:
Dong Yun Yoon, I do not have many heroes in my life, I am far too cynical for that, but you have just ascended to the top of the Pantheon of personal heroes that I do have. I couldn’t forgive and accept what happened to your family if it happened to mine, I know myself well enough to know that I just COULDN’T. You have.
You, sir, are a far, far better man than I am. Such an event would kill me as thoroughly as it killed my family. I can’t even imagine. God bless you, sir, God bless you.
Link here.
I agree. I’d like to believe that I could come to those feelings in time, but the very next day? That’s some amazing forgiveness that man has to offer and we could all learn much from his behavior. May he find what peace there is.
I definitely applaud his composure just after many members of his family died for no reason.
I just don’t get the point of the argument.
If a pilot of a commercial airline ran into difficulty, crashed the plane, and somehow ended up surviving (or even didn’t) I don’t think anyone would even think to blame him for the horrible accident that killed so many people or plea to others that he not be persecuted for flying the plane when it crashed. Of course he did everything he could do.
Why should this be different for a jet that crashed into a house? He obviously didn’t aim it for the house and didn’t want anyone to be killed… of course. Who would be angry at him?
Of course he’d think “What could I have done differently?” and that would eat at him for a bit, but eventually he’d have to come to realize that he’d done everything he could. I doubt anyone would be blaming him except himself at any point in time.
Because people, especially those grieving, want to find someone or something to blame. Take for instance the recent online suicide of that kid from a body building forum; his father wanted everyone involved’s head and understandably, I believe he was mainly speaking from an unfathomable level of hurt. Perhaps in this man’s instance, he understands that full well up front and is trying to save the only one surviving some pain.
At least, that would be my interpretation of it. Because even if rationally I could explain to myself this couldn’t have been helped, if it had happened to me I’m sure at least initially I’d be questioning. If not outright making-no-sense accusatory. "Surely he could’ve prevented this somehow! Flown a different direction (maybe only tangentally realizing it might mean hitting something else other than my loved ones) and had a different (to me anyway) outcome. Not reasonable, but I can see it.
I wouldn’t blame the pilot unless I had some reason to believe he was at fault. That wouldn’t make sense. I don’t see simply not behaving irrationally as particularly virtuous.
Is it not obvious? The pilot of a commercial airline is going to do everything he can to keep the plane from crashing because he has no other choice! He can’t escape the horrible fate, so he has to try to do something up until the very instant he dies.
A fighter pilot EJECTS. The minute he is in any danger, he has the ability to bail; to flee to safety. A commercial pilot does not have that luxary. So it would be easy for someone to wonder just how much that pilot did to avoid the accident. Did he eject at the very last possible second, narrowly avoiding death himself? Or did he chicken out and pop smoke a few seconds early because of fear?
This man in the OP has chosen to believe the former. Good for him. That is commendable. Personally, I might be inclined to believe that a man only does everything he can if he actually rides the plane into the ground. That ensures that he was at the controls attempted something up until the very last second of his life.
You’ve cited a bad example. He wanted their heads. Rightfully so.
I’d be the first to beat the crap out of someone who could’ve called 911 and caused the damage to be minimal at most instead of watching someone die.
This pilot, barring gross negligence, which I doubt he had committed, did nothing wrong except be in a machine that was defective or in weather conditions that he could not alter.
If you were in the plane and it were going down, you only had a couple seconds to spare before you knew you had to push the button, would you push it to the edge and try to edge it away from homes or would you check out early and let the cards fall?
“Oh Crap! I’m going to crash! There’s some houses over there… Let’s see… I could try to aim for them… hrm… No… Not into that killing people thing… I could eject now and not care… ehhhhh… Or I could try to push it away from them and eject when I know there’s nothing more that I could really do.”
Well, let’s see. San Diego. There’s an ocean around there somewhere. Not much chance of crashing into somebody’s home in an ocean. Would there have been time to aim it that way? We’ll never know.
I think a thorough investigation will prove that to not be the case.
At those speeds and with that competence behind the figurative wheel I would completely put my trust in the theory that the pilot did all he could do.
And I’m second to say he should sue the hell out of the Marine Corps. They sent him on a mission and the plane crashed of no fault to him. Just as any other large business would be sued over negligent maintenance to a Train, Plane, or Automobile or be sued over sending a pilot over populated areas in inclement weather (I don’t know if the weather was inclement or not).
They might even have a case, depending on the maneuvers they were doing, of suing them for being over populated areas.
But see, what both Bear_Nenno and Hilarity N. Suze thought of are just some of the myriad things that people can come up with in a time of grief. And while it ultimately will show that this man did what he could, for the person who was most intimately affected it by to understand and urge compassion from those who don’t, is what’s amazing and beautiful.
Plus, I am the kind of person that thinks if more folks were praised for “simply not behaving irrationally,” then many more might be actually seen as “particularly virtuous.” I don’t understand what it hurts to commend someone for the things they do, whether they are expected to do them or not.
From what I’ve read on the subject, no one knew the teen’s name, landline phone number, location. How do you call 911 and say “some kid somewhere who has a history of huge pranks* posted a ‘prank’ to a jokes forum but we think he’s really serious now”? I read the chat log and once they figure out he’s not joking, people are trying to look up his registration info for his website, only to discover it’s bogus info (not uncommon), and finally one guy remembers a time when he’d posted his cell number. They then finally get his location and call the cops for that area.
The example I’d read was him leading on people for a long time about how he was going to travel the country and needed to set up many places to crash at, etc., only to finally go “just kidding.” That forum on the board was for jokes, pranks, and BSing, and apparently many were outrageous and even tasteless.
<unhijacking>That being said, it was a remarkably reserved statement for someone who must be in unimaginable agony. Many people automatically jump to the conclusion that something else could have been done and the pilot screwed up somehow, and the man who lost his family had room enough in his heart to realize how much guilt the pilot must be feeling, and wanted to try to comfort him too. If my husband died, I’m not sure I could say anything intelligible for a long time afterwards.