Please, name the last pilot to be put in jail for something like this. its pretty simple...situational awareness is something that is refined with constant use of a skill set or from crew training and dark cockpit drills, he doesn’t practice this in a train to fight scenario or a train to keep my 200 passengers from dying scenario. He is a personal owner and flyer. What happened to Ford could have happened to any of us. He owns a helo and a fixed wing, each have tail numbers, easy enough to screw up a call to ground and then again to forget to switch over the selector switch to the tower freq or to make that call using the “Orange County ground this is Cessna 1248 in charlie park request clearance to taxiway 3”, getting a tail number wrong doesn’t indicate dementia. He is lucky he survived it. I can count on one hand the number of times I made a similar mistake. One time my co-pilot answered me because I made the call on ICS instead of the ground freq. He cleared me and gave me an altimeter reading of 342.76 barometric pressure reading with winds out of 366 at 45. I turned to the co-pilot and asked him, did you hear that guy, must be a guy going through training. He say no, I missed it what did he say. I finally turn to him and he is hanging outside the door with his armored side panel open mic boom up away from his mouth, hand over his mouth Laughing his ass off. If he can pass a class I flight physical and his annual check ride then he has the right to pilot a plane. Remember, take-offs are optional, landings are mandatory. No I never landed to a taxiway over another plane thinking I was landing to the main runway, although doing so wouldn’t have been completely crazy had I been directed to do so, I flew a helo, we can land down-wind and almost anywhere depending on conditions.
Amen.
It's my understanding that John Wayne Airport is among the busiest,and most important,airports in Southern California.Several of the country's largest airlines operate flights to ORD,DFW,SEA and ATL.It's not difficult for me to imagine the chaos that a light aircraft could cause at an airport like this.
If he *had* caused serious harm and I had been on the jury of a criminal trial I may very well have voted guilty.If he had caused harm/damage and I was a juror in a civil trial I absolutely would have awarded the victims millions...many,*many* millions.
“What happened to Ford could have happened to any of us.”
It couldn’t happen to me.
Unfortunately I can not afford my own personal airplane, jet, or helo.
That, AND I don’t have my pilot’s license or any experience flying an aircraft.
;-)