Accidents Will Happen - NYC Small Plane Crash

It was terrible news yesterday when I woke up in the early afternoon and heard that a small plane had crashed into an apartment building in NYC. Like most people, my thoughts went back to 911 and in the pit of my stomach I was hoping that history was not repeating itself once again. The good news is that yesterday’s small plane crash in NYC was the result of an unfortunately accident and while there were a few people killing either in or because of the crash, it doesn’t look like terrorist were responsible. There were several local, state and federal politicians in New York talking on television about this latest crash and expressing a concern that hundreds, if not thousands of small planes are buzzing around the Manhattan skyline every single day and most of these planes are not required to have a definite flight plan in place in order to enter this airspace filled with tall buildings.

Here is just another area where freedom and safety come into conflict and at least until this point in time, freedom has won out for the private pilots who love to fly small airplanes. Unfortunately, what yesterday’s crash proved not only to Americans, but to any terrorist who was watching was that there is another hole in our national security, at least in the NYC area and now if the government doesn’t plug that hole, some evil terrorist will try and exploit it for their own advantage. So much has changed since the terrorist attacks of 911, but for the most part the US has remained pretty much like it was before those attacks, but the problem is that terrorist are not going away and the loss of freedoms will not occur all at one time, but will be put into place over a period of years as US security weaknesses become apparent.

I feel badly for those who lost their lives yesterday in this tragic small plane crash in NYC, but I am glad it doesn’t appear to be terrorism related. In my view, no small plane should be allowed to just buzz around the island of Manhattan without having a darn good reason to be there in the first place. All the folks who love to second-guess decisions made by government officials will now take out their judgment fingers and start point toward everyone in sight about this accident. The truth is none of us live in a totally safe world and just getting out of the bed in the morning involves some type of risk to a person’s safety. To me, allowing anyone who has a pilots license to buzz around over Manhattan is pretty stupid and while pilots want to have the freedom to fly when and where they desire, in this terrorist filled world, that doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Several years ago, a friend of mine took me up in his small airplane for a ride. Before that date, I had never been in one of these small airplanes. My flying experience had always been in large commercial jet airliners. If you haven’t ever flown in a small airplane before, trust me, it is nothing like flying in a big commercial jet aircraft. These small planes move very slowly, fly low and are bumpy as hell, sometimes. I was lucky I didn’t throw up before my friend finally got his plane back on the ground and I made a ton of excuses to get out of flying with him again. I’m sure more information will be forthcoming about exactly what happened in NYC yesterday and what caused this small plane to veer into a 50-story building. The only good thing about accidents like this one are that experts do learn things which will make such an accident less likely to happen again in the future.

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Accidents Will Happen

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