Just to follow up on the last post, I’ve started the process of getting back in the air. I’m going to try to fly on Friday.

Anyway, yesterday I saw a post on Twitter of a news story in one of the local papers. The story was about an ultralight that clipped a fence during an emergency landing. Reading it, I realized that the article really made me mad. I’ll offer an offending quote:

“Although Van Hooser put the plane down in a field near Jefferson County Middle School, the sheriff said the students were in no danger.”

I don’t understand how that has anything to do with the story. Moreover, the existence of the story is really what I object to. I object to the fact that nobody cared that this gentleman had built a flying machine. No one from the newspaper was there to take pictures and write about his maiden voyage in the craft. More importantly, yesterday people learned to fly, built planes, or had their 50,000th successful landing. Was there anyone there to write about any of it in a popular news publication? Not likely. Instead, this gentleman almost had a successful emergency landing and the newspaper is rushing to get a picture for the article and telling everyone their children weren’t in any danger. From a bent ultralight? I don’t think they’d have been in any danger if he’d landed on the school grounds…

We often wonder why people don’t like planes and pilots and such. Well, I’d say it’s because the only time aviation makes the news is when something goes wrong. A plane crashes, someone buzzes a beach, or passengers are suffering in a plane they’ve been stuck on for hours. It’s ridiculous.