A JetBlue airplane was also struck, although not as seriously:
I’ve been watching pilot debriefs on Youtube by Hoover. It is amazing how many private pilots treat flying like driving. Maybe I total my car on the freeway but I’m not at risk of my car falling out of the sky or crashing into a mountain at 100mph.
Heads up to folks in San Diego or the Bay Area:
Martin Mars To Visit San Francisco, San Diego On Final Flight
Supposed to happen next week, no details on actual dates yet. I definitely plan on seeing it in San Franciso if at all possible.
I much prefer reading to watching videos. While that guy seems very qualified, the titles of his videos look very click-baity. One of them has an arrow pointing to a pilot labeled “jerk”. Even if true, it’s probably not the sort of thing I’d care to spend time on. Could you describe some of his better work before I commit to watching?
Think I mentioned this before recently, but I’m hugely impressed by the writing of Kyra Dempsey, aka Admiral Cloudberg. She writes long articles about aviation accidents with meticulous research. Most involve professional pilots though, not general aviation.
He is critical of the bad decision making but tries to be as respectful as possible bearing in mind the friends and family of the pilot may see his video. He does a good analysis of what led to the accident and alternative choices the pilot should have made.
Almost by definition, the accidents happen to the pilots who make poor decisions (or fail to make decisions at all). At least on the day they crash; they might be fine most other days.
The ones who play heads-up ball are the ones who don’t need accident reconstruction.
Yesterday I saw my first HondaJet in the wild, landing at BLI.
Very cool! I sometimes virtually fly one in MS Flight Simulator, having never heard of such an aircraft, and it seems very much targeted to the owner-pilot market. As simplified and automated as possible, it seems.
Another plane shot at. Should we arm all planes so they can start shooting back?
No proof of that. It’s Texas. Might as well be Port-au-Prince. Random bullets are something we just have to live with, don’t you know?
That’s what the plane gets for not being trumpy enough. No red anywhere.
Well it was in Dallas so you have to Love that.
Good one!
It’s showin’ love, Texas style.
Heartily seconded, I’ve mentioned them several times in this thread and am always impressed by their writing - so much so I recently subscribed to their Patreon, which I’ve never done for anything else.
Maybe it was a takeoff salute.
Very possible. It’s certainly a shot in the dark.
If it was a shot across the bow … they missed.
On a more serious note, there’s enough gunfire arcing over any US city at any time that random bullet impacts into something are a routine, if often unnoticed or un-newsworthy, event. Was this somebody shooting at taxiing airliners, or somebody shooting at something up close to them but oblivious to the airport a mile away? Or somebody just shooting at random, generally aware there’s a city & airport & factories and suburbia generally over thataway?
You obviously have a lot more experience than I do but thinking about the major airports near me. you’d have to have spectacularly bad aim, more than just a couple of degrees high, to accidentally hit a plane at most of them as there’s nothing below for the last bit of final except maybe a road.
I’m just talking about some yahoo 2 or 5 miles away from the airport in any direction, not necessarily aligned with a runway. Now that yahoo is firing randomly into the sky and the bullets fall wherever they may. If there happens to be an airport in that general direction, some will land on the airport. I meant no more than that.
Bottom line: Is this aimed fire, sorta half-assed aimed-in-the-general-direction-of-an-airport fire, or just a random bullet impact that happened to strike something newsworthy?
NHRA Nationals were cancelled mid-way through the day when a plane (Piper PA-32)crashed into the parking lot. No deaths, a couple of critical injuries, hella scary. Luckily Emergency Services were there for the race, so response was instant.