Jerk pilot instructor gets his student killed

[Murrmurr]

During a brief flight, a pilot instructor is on social media horribly insulting his student, and ignores a controller's instructions to veer away from a thunder storm. Both are dead. Pilot is at fault.

Here's an instructor's opinion. (he's obviously angry)

 

[Bretrick]

The families of the two victims must be devastated.
The instructors attitude is prevalent everywhere.
One only needs to see those car drivers who think that the road belongs to them.
Leaving chaos in their wake.

 

[Tish]

That is dreadful.

 

[Murrmurr]

That is dreadful.

I can't imagine the pain that kid's parents are feeling.

 

[911]

When I was taking my private pilot’s license (years ag), we came upon a t’storm. My instructor turned us around and headed back towards where we took off from. He said anytime he can avoid a storm in a light plane, he takes the high road.

Even the best of pilots don’t take on thunderstorms. Our in-house pilot, oldman, told me he went over the top of a t’storm. He flew much bigger planes that I ever did. I still remember that crash in Dallas caused by a microburst, which I never heard of until that accident occurred.

 

[CallMeKate]

During a brief flight, a pilot instructor is on social media horribly insulting his student, and ignores a controller's instructions to veer away from a thunder storm. Both are dead. Pilot is at fault.

How horrible! Know what sticks out to me? "Instructor is on social media..."
No idea if it's the case this time, but there have been countless car accidents, deaths, severe injuries, etc. while recording... desperately seeking that next viral video. (I haven't watched the videos yet... maybe the angry guy will mention that?)

 

[Mike]

Maybe for training flights, the carrying of phones should
be banned, they have better communications, via the radio,
no phones allowed, I say.

Mike.

 

[Murrmurr]

How horrible! Know what sticks out to me? "Instructor is on social media..."
No idea if it's the case this time, but there have been countless car accidents, deaths, severe injuries, etc. while recording... desperately seeking that next viral video. (I haven't watched the videos yet... maybe the angry guy will mention that?)

And it wasn't just that he was posting on social media, he was on there to belittle his student and gripe about him and call him names. He was an absolute a-hole.

 

[Murrmurr]

When I was taking my private pilot’s license (years ag), we came upon a t’storm. My instructor turned us around and headed back towards where we took off from. He said anytime he can avoid a storm in a light plane, he takes the high road.

Even the best of pilots don’t take on thunderstorms. Our in-house pilot, oldman, told me he went over the top of a t’storm. He flew much bigger planes that I ever did. I still remember that crash in Dallas caused by a microburst, which I never heard of until that accident occurred.

This guy was too arrogant to worry about it. He saw the storm on his weather radar and posted something like "looks like a bunch of angry bees."

 

[911]

This guy was too arrogant to worry about it. He saw the storm on his weather radar and posted something like "looks like a bunch of angry bees."

There are pilots that are willing to take risks during storms. My instructor told me to always see which way the storm is moving and go the other way. With flying a light plane, you can always set it down in a field if necessary, if your fuel is low.

 

[DebraMae]

We had a renter one time who had to sit down in a field returning from a trip because he ran out of gas. He knew it was going to be close but decided to try it.

 

[oldman]

Every now and then, we hear about these macho pilots that think they are the best of the best. I have known several pilots who criticized other pilots for different things they may have done wrong. I ask them if they corrected the pilot. Most don’t. I don’t know why, but they don’t. It’s like they want the pilot to mess up bad enough that he or she will end up in the supervisor’s office.

Not me. I see a pilot make a mistake and I am all over it correcting the pilot. I want everyone to be safe and that begins in the cockpit. We had a veteran pilot 9the Captain) nearing retirement and he was befuddled because a bulb on one of the insignificant switches wouldn’t light. He had spent about 15 minutes trying to get the bulb out of the socket, but he couldn’t get it out. He told the first officer to work at it while he took a bathroom break. That was a mistake. Now, no one was watching the instruments. Meanwhile, the plane was very slowly loosing altitude.

After about 5 minutes, the pilot (the Captain) that was in the lavatory came back into the cockpit and finally noticed they had dropped from 34,000 feet down to 9000 feet and thankfully for him, they were out of radar range, so ATC couldn’t see on his radar what his altitude was. Also, luckily, they weren’t flying near any mountains. Nobody would have known a thing, except there was a check pilot in the cockpit who was getting ready to take overflying the plane.

I don’t know what the outcome was, but I did hear from a very good source that the Captain caught holy you-know-what and was suspended without pay for 30 days. Surprisingly, he took the opportunity to retire. He was only a year or so out, but when any pilot gets to the point where they start to ignore the little things, it may be time to think about handing over the keys. Sometimes, it’s the little things that mean the most.