Posted on 03/26/2015 5:25:59 PM PDT by Kaslin
RUSH: So, "The copilot of the doomed Germanwings jet barricaded himself in the cockpit and 'intentionally' sent the plane full speed into a mountain in the French Alps, ignoring the pilot's frantic pounding on the door and the screams of terror from passengers, a prosecutor said Thursday." It's amazing how fast they get prosecutors on the case over there. You know, in Europe, the spokesmen are always the prosecutors, not the cops. I mean, it's all law enforcement.
It's amazing.
"Copilot Andreas Lubitz's 'intention (was) to destroy this plane,' Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said, laying out the horrifying conclusions reached by French aviation investigators after listening to the last minutes of Tuesday's Flight 9525. The Airbus A320 was flying from Barcelona to Dusseldorf when it began to descend from cruising altitude of 38,000 feet after losing radio contact with air traffic controllers. All 150 on board died when the plane slammed into the mountain."
The prosecutor "said, 'The most plausible, the most probably, is that the copilot voluntarily refused to open the door of the cockpit for the captain and pressed the button for the descent.' He said the copilot's responses, initially courteous in the first part of the trip, became 'curt' when the captain began the mid-flight briefing on the planned landing." Have you noticed that stretching? They don't want to call this terrorism. They don't want to call this terrorism.
I guarantee you the people on that plane were terrorized. In fact, it's being theorized that for... You know, it took eight minutes to descend, and there was not a whole lot of radio contact, and it didn't seem to be a descent. The theory is the passengers didn't know 'til the last minute what was happening, and that's when the screams were heard. Here is the prosecutor. This is the segment of the press conference that has set the world on fire just a bit here.
BRICE ROBIN (via translator): He voluntarily allowed the plane to descend and lose altitude, about 1,000 meters per minute. It's not normal.
RUSH: No question it's not normal, but they don't want to call it terrorism here yet. Folks, they just don't know. The copilot, 28-year-old German, has a home there. There's a picture of him sitting by the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. On Fox & Friends this morning retired Air Force general Thomas McInerney was the guest, and Anna Kooiman said, "He's 28 years old, a German national.
"They don't know his religion or his ideology," and it took 'em a long time to announce the pilots' names, and they knew these names for a long time. It took them awhile to make that news public. But she asked General McInerney, "What type of background checks do pilots have to go through in that part of the world, and also here in the US? What kind of psychological examinations, things like that, before they're hired?"
MCINERNEY: They're pretty extensive, and the thing is is... But they're very sensitive on religion, and that's why -- because I focus on radical Islam is why -- I migrate to that, because there's a logic and a rationale that they become suicide bombers. For other people, I would call a violent extremist for whatever his ideology is. You'd have to look into that. But the airlines are pretty extensive on that, and I think we're gonna find as this peels back and we get the facts, the question is what is the ideology behind the terrorism, and that's what they're gonna have to look at very extensively.
RUSH: They're not gonna want to tell us. It's obvious they're not gonna want to tell us. They're trying to stretch this out or delay this as long as they can.
Now, Copilot "Lubitz' recently deleted Facebook page appeared to show a smiling man in a dark brown jacket posing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in California," San Francisco. "The page was wiped sometime in the past two days. Lufthansa said Lubitz joined Germanwings in September 2013, directly out of flight school, and had flown 630 hours. The captain had more than 6,000 hours of flying time and been a Germanwings pilot since May 2014, having previously flown for Lufthansa and Condor.
"The circumstances of the crash are likely to raise questions anew about" background checks and this kind of thing. Yeah, they're actually gonna look into background checks a little bit more extensively here. They're saying, "Okay, well, maybe the pilot was depressed. Maybe he just wanted to commit suicide. No, folks. You don't commit suicide and take 150 people with you. I mean, maybe you do. I don't know.
I don't have the suicide mentality or gene or what have you. Anyway, whatever they're trying to do here to avoid calling it terrorism or what have you, doesn't change the fact that the people on board that plane were terrorized. Ever wondered why plane crashes so captivate people and the attention span? I mean, here we have 150 people died, and they died all at once, and it's... I'm not being critical of this. I just examine this sociologically. It's fascinating to me.
The number of people who die in the United States on the highways of this country in automobile accidents is roughly on average 50,000 people a year. The number of people who perish in airplane crashes is way, way below that. But even when there is a massive pileup in an automobile accident, and there are a significant number of deaths, it does not occupy the news cycle for hours and days like a plane crash does. I think there's more to it than just the number of people. Have you ever thought about why this is?
Why is it that airplane crashes actually are rare compared to other accidents that claim people's lives? I've always said, "If you really want to ban death, if you really want to cut down on the number of deaths, then ban the wheel." Automobiles are involved in more deaths than smoking cigarettes, playing in the NFL, or any number of things. Yet there's never even the slightest consideration given to banning the wheel because it's entirely impractical. Yet so many more people die as the result of wheels being used ever since they've been invented.
It's just fascinating to me.
You know what I think part of it is?
I think part of it is rooted in the fact that even people who claim to not be afraid of flying still think it's a really unnatural thing to do. And so a plane crash reminds them of how unnatural an act getting in a fuselage or a tube and heading up five miles in the air is. Whereas getting in a car, you're already on the ground. It's the old thing. My father owned an airplane, when my brother and I were young. It was a single-engine Cessna 182, and there was, to be honest about it... There was some fear, a little bit fear of flying in certain sectors of the family.
I remember one time somebody saying to my dad, "Well, what happens if the engine quits and you're up there?"
This plane maxed out at 10,000 feet. It had no oxygen. It was a small plane.
"What happens if you're up there five or six thousand feet and the engine quits?"
The prospect of automobile and airplane accidents are different psychologically because of 1. control or lack of and 2. survivability.
If you’ve ever watched people disembarking from a commercial flight, you might notice that everybody is wearing a face upon which is etched a combination of triumph and relief. Also, mark their behavior during a landing. The atmosphere is tense, and the tension immediately lifts once the plane has come to a stop.
And the fact that you are completely dependent on the integrity of a machine.
We are currently obsessed with aircraft disasters because its merely a metaphor for a bigger disaster. Kind of Freudian, I guess... We have someone leading the Ship of State into the ground, purposely wrecking the Republic, while appearing to upwards of half the population of anything but that. What are the rest of us to do while the plane goes into the ground? Well, obsess over aircraft disasters.
I suppose that is natural
Fear of heights.
you are right...it’s all about control and survivability. I love Rush, but he was just stammering around cluelessly on this topic. He eventually swerved into some truth, but it’s clear: in a car, you are IN CONTROL.....and you can imagine a minor car accident if something goes wrong.
When something goes wrong at 35000 feet, there is no minor accident possibility.
Because of the time it takes for the tragedy to unfold - an automobile accident is over in a matter of seconds - little time to anticipate and panic - but just the thought of having five minutes to become aware that your are inevitably going to crash and die, and imagining the horror this anticipation would bring on, is enough to make one think twice of flying......
In ages past, I think ship-wrecks and sinkings evoked the same kinds of fear. There were a lot of people sailing in ships who could not swim.
Georgia is on mt short list of possible places to look into. Where would you suggest I look in Georgia?
Thanks.
I just finished reading “Dead Wake” abut The Lusitania and you are correct.
It was huge news——and not just because of the war.
It’s human to want a lot of information about tragedies.
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Clueless is right, we haven’t been at 50,000 auto related deaths since the 70s. Averaging around 35,000 per year the last decade and declining.
The proper way to compare air travel safety and auto safety is not by looking at deaths per mile. A real comparison is deaths per trip. If you get on the conveyance will you get off alive?
A cursory look says about 15,000 passenger flights per day. Let’s call that 50,000 to be generous. That’s a lot of flights. That’s also a drop in the bucket compared to the number of car trips.
Cars safe. Air travel much less safe. Get in a car and the odds of exiting the car alive are high. Get on a plane and the odds of exiting the plane alive are not as high.
When you fly, you are putting your life into the hands of many strangers of questionable competence. From the person who designed the aircraft and software to the mechanic who maintains it to the pilot who flies it to the air traffic controller who directs the flight. Plus you are surrounded by strange people, any of which could decide at some moment to kill everyone. It is amazing in a way that flying is so safe.
The ambulance chaser biz has dropped off so much, around here they’re all trolling on tv for Social Security disability clients.
You fly the airplane.
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