Re-Run Sunday: Planes should have horns

I just read another blogger apologizing for re-running a blog, like he’d let his readership down. At www.EightDaysToAmish.com we celebrate ‘em! It’s like a holiday. Well, it is for me at least.

This one is from April ’12 when I wondered how come crashing airplanes don’t have horns to warn the folks on the ground to run for their lives.

It’s been nearly seven days since the crash of the Navy F/A 18-D Hornet into a 40-unit Virginia Beach apartment building and I still have a lot of questions.

Chiefly, how come planes don’t have horns?

Every plane on the planet has multiple safety overlaps intended to help ensure the gargantuan machines defy gravity.

But I doubt any of the flight manuals include instructions for a pilot to yell a courtesy, “Head’s up!” when those systems catastrophically fail.

Regular readers know my office is above my favorite tavern. And, sidebar, the happenstance always reminds me of an old country song, “If I Had My Life to Live Over, I’d Live Over a Tavern.”

Yes, everyday I thank my lucky stars.

But what if those stars one day turn unlucky?

See, me and the bar are both directly in the landing path for the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport about two miles away. It’s a great little airport. It serves Spirit flights clear from Ft. Lauderdale and is a real boon to the community. We’re all excited about the Blue Angels appearing here June 23-24.

Many days I look out my window and marvel at the majesty of the big jets zooming by.

I wonder about the people inside. Did they enjoy their vacations? Were their business trips fruitful? Are they happy to be heading home?

And I think about the pilot. Is he sober? Does he feel like showing off? Is he about to go crazy like that JetBlue guy did a couple week’s ago? (favorite headline: “This Is Your Captain Freaking!”)

I think, too, about the great hand of fate and how about 30 times a day it could impetuously send a plane crashing into my happy little life and I’d never have the faintest clue of my pending doom.

Worse, it might happen when I was actually up here attempting to work. That means I’d die a fraction of a second before my buddies, not near enough time for them to hold a decent wake, toast my memory, or even express a good bitch about all the money and drinks I died owing them.

If a plane had a horn, the pilot might be thoughtfully honking it as the plane was spiraling into oblivion. I could look out my window and have time to say a quick ass-kissy prayer taking back all the sacrilegious stuff I’d written the last few years.

Just in case, hang on a sec while I take a peek . . . all clear. Whew.

And I stand behind everything I’ve ever written!

This isn’t idle speculation, either. A few years ago I read a news brief that made a great impression on me, and I say that understanding it made a more profound impression on the hapless victim.

It involved the death of a beach jogger who was struck by a little Cessna that needed to make an emergency landing and did so right on top of the jogger. That it was one of those freaky things didn’t make the guy any less dead.

I spent a lot of time thinking about that stranger. A health-minded individual, he may have felt euphoria at having the opportunity to jog along the beach at sundown. He may have been hoping to appear fit and refreshed for an exciting dinner date with a cute girl or boy.

The story lacked detail so I’ll make no prejudicial suppositions.

One thing he likely never considered was the one thing that cost him his life.

He wore earbuds.

He never heard the approaching plane bearing down on him or the hollered warnings of fellow beach combers.

Instead, he probably heard Adele.

I remember thinking, if it were a flying car, a typical driver would have honked the horn, flipped the guy off and executed a routine landing, a better result than executing a routine jogger.

I never followed up, but I would have loved to have heard why the pilot didn’t just ditch in the surf. The only thing I can figure is he must have been wearing dress slacks.

But that was the exact moment when I began advocating mandatory plane horns.

That’s at least one death that could have been prevented if planes came equipped with horns.

So let the swingers have their mile-high club.

I won’t be satisfied until it’s the planes themselves that are horny.

Rabbit flies to Dallas and back for $44

(673 words)

This is bound to sound like a Bugs Bunny tale, but I swear it’s true: Rabbit flew to Dallas and back for just $44.

Rabbit’s a real colorful and animated guy, just not in the celluloid way you think of  when you think of Bugs. He’s one of the six or seven United States postal carriers who frequent The Pond.

Why all these postal carriers wind up in this particular watering hole about two miles from the nearest postal facility is a mystery, as is why they call this one Rabbit. I don’t even know if he even has a real name. And actually as of about a month ago Rabbit is no longer a postal employee. He retired after 35 years of lugging mail around Westmoreland County.

I asked if they threw him a party.

They didn’t. He just danced right out the door.

I find myself thinking a lot about Rabbit these days. I thought about him again Saturday when Val and I stopped in for some beers at The Hofbrau Haus on Pittsburgh’s South Side. I was checking out the menu to see if it served hassenfeffer, which is rabbit stew.

If it does, I didn’t see it.

I have never had rabbit stew and I’ve never seen Rabbit stew. He’s very cheerful. 

He says we should all go with him to Dallas one afternoon and we’re thinking about it. It sounds like a perfectly senseless road trip.

See, Rabbit came into the bar a couple of months ago and said he’d just gotten back from Dallas.

“It was $44 roundtrip. Can you believe it?”

No, we couldn’t. It sounded preposterous. So he showed us the receipt.

It was just as he’d said. He’d flown from Latrobe to Dallas round trip for $44. And parking at the Latrobe airport’s free.

Best part of the story? He tried to haggle for an even cheaper ticket, which I guess with Spirit would have to be out strapped to the wing.

His daughter lives there so he flew down for cheap to have some lunch with her and fly back.

Yes, here in Latrobe our retired mailmen are jet setters.

Spirit Airlines out of Arnold Palmer Regional Airport has for a few months been flying a Dallas route as one of its destinations that include Orlando, Myrtle Beach and Fort Lauderdale. If it flew to New Orleans it would mean our little regional airport is the gateway to anywhere anyone would ever need to go. 

CBS Sunday Morning just featured Spirit Airlines on a segment the other day. They took shots at it for being too cheap.

How dare they. I love Spirit Airlines. They’re a huge boon to the community. Many western Pennsylvanians are foregoing flying out of Greater Pitt in order to fly from the AP airport.

CBS knocked Spirit for often being late, cramped and for charging for petty incidentals, but anymore isn’t that the industry standard? Flying commercial’s a nightmare. And that was before the only thing the major airlines used to lose was luggage.

We suspect Rabbit’s deal was available because Spirit is winding down the Dallas route that failed to draw much local interest.

So we probably have about a month to decide if a gang of us wants to fly roundtrip to Dallas for $44, which is less than it would cost us drive to Pittsburgh for an afternoon jaunt.

What would we do in Dallas?

“For that little,” Gary said, “it’d be fun to just walk around the airport.”

He’s right. We could spend the afternoon heckling stupid Cowboy fans.

It sounds perfectly exotic, especially for a gang of guys whose idea of “going someplace different” involves sitting on stools on other side of the bar.

So that’s just some news about our now-retired friend Rabbit. It’s a post that covers Rabbit’s retirement, Rabbit’s good cheer, Rabbit’s travel habits and the creative ways in which Rabbit is spending his free time.

So, of course, I just had to slug today’s item whatsup.doc

Related . . .

The splendid folly of life’s little roadtrips

Tweeting about airline difficulties

Honk if you’re for increased airline safety

America’s biggest hamburger and America’s biggest ham

Tweeting about airline difficulties

(694 words)

We were camped at 5 p.m. outside Gate 32 at the Orlando International Airport. Every 15 minutes a Spirit Airline employee would say our 2:55 flight back to Latrobe would be delayed another 15 minutes. 

That meant every minute after that some jerk in an obnoxious shirt would loudly announce he’d just Tweeted to his 1,200 followers to never fly Spirit Airlines again.

Shame on you if you think I’m talking about myself.

My Tommy Bahama shirts are perfectly tasteful, I don’t shout my opinions to airport strangers and, geez, I only have 202 followers.

That last part confounds me.

Is our Twitter society so moronic it would rather follow a goofball who Tweets “#SPIRIT SUCKs!” or me, a guy who last week tweeted this @8Days2Amish gem:

“Loud bulimics make the worst neighbors. They can never keep it down.”

Now, that’s a tweet.

Here’s what I’d have tweet/shouted if I felt compelled to share my opinions of our plight:

“Those of us who enjoy reading don’t care if the plane’s a little late. Lighten the f*&#$ up!”

Of course, part of my reaction may have been that I’m an uncomfortable flier with plenty of time on my hands.

I’d have been relieved if they’d have announced, “Look, we’ve all decided flying is a preposterous way to transport human beings so we’re canceling this flight and will instead issue you all free Amtrak tickets along with vouchers for a bag of pretzels and one free domestic beer.”

If they make flying more comfortable, more of us would fly more often. Instead, flying is so stressful most of us go to great lengths to avoid it. 

If we can’t, well, then I’m reminded of the late Lewis Grizzard’s motto: “If given a choice, I will never fly. If given no choice, I will never fly sober.”

This was my fourth flight in the past month. I was nervous about the first one because I feared a recurrence of past claustrophobia issues.

Turns out that problem has vanished. Of my four flights, three of them were in the middle seat and I felt no queasy anxiety or urge to run up and down the aisles screaming, “Mommy! Mommy!” which FAA regulations strictly forbid.

So when we finally boarded two-and-a-half hours late, I was far from the most uncomfortable passenger on the plane.

Turns out that guy was in my seat.

His name was Mitch and he lives in nearby Indiana, Pa. He’d made himself at home in my aisle seat directly across from the three seats occupied by my family.

Armed with the proper ticket and righteous privilege, I sort of said, hey, pal, you’re in my seat. Scoot over.

“Would you mind sitting in the middle seat?” he asked plaintively. “I’m very uncomfortable about flying.”

I felt like high-fiving him. Me, too!

So I look at him and I see myself. He was in his 40s, had the flop sweat on the brow and looked like was on the verge of begging. He was miserable. 

I’ve been there. I knew exactly what the man was going through. 

So how on earth could I say no? I couldn’t.

I climbed into the middle seat I’d spent the last eight weeks or so dreading. I was feeling none of his obvious tensions.

Plus, it gave me the opportunity to play therapist to a fellow sufferer. I sympathized, consoled and shared with him the aforementioned Grizzard tip. I got to be a lowercase hero to a struggling stranger.

I felt especially proud that I didn’t use my act of humanity as a sales pitch to buy “Use All The Crayons!”  which I felt would have tainted my kindness.

Spirit chose to compensate us each with $50 vouchers for our next flight, so I assume that jerk lied to his 1,200 Twitter followers. He’ll fly them again soon, I’m sure.

I’ll bet he didn’t tweet that one.

Want to know what I tweeted after all this? After the delay? After my gesture?

“The romantic in me still sometimes wonders if Barnacle Bill the Sailor ever found true love.”

Now, that’s a tweet, too.

Related . . .

• Return of the panic attacks

• Honk if you’re for increased airline safety

• Plane truths from a real road warrior

Honk if you're for increased airline safety!

It’s been nearly seven days since the crash of the Navy F/A 18-D Hornet into a 40-unit Virginia Beach apartment building and I still have a lot of questions.

Chiefly, how come planes don’t have horns?

Every plane on the planet has multiple safety overlaps intended to help ensure the gargantuan machines defy gravity.

But I doubt any of the flight manuals include instructions for a pilot to yell a courtesy, “Head’s up!” when those systems catastrophically fail.

Regular readers know my office is above my favorite tavern. And, sidebar, the happenstance always reminds me of an old country song, “If I Had My Life to Live Over, I’d Live Over a Tavern.”

Yes, everyday I thank my lucky stars.

But what if those stars one day turn unlucky?

See, me and the bar are both directly in the landing path for the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport about two miles away. It’s a great little airport. It serves Spirit flights clear from Ft. Lauderdale and is a real boon to the community. We’re all excited about the Blue Angels appearing here June 23-24.

Many days I look out my window and marvel at the majesty of the big jets zooming by.

I wonder about the people inside. Did they enjoy their vacations? Were their business trips fruitful? Are they happy to be heading home?

And I think about the pilot. Is he sober? Does he feel like showing off? Is he about to go crazy like that JetBlue guy did a couple week’s ago? (favorite headline: “This Is Your Captain Freaking!”)

I think, too, about the great hand of fate and how about 30 times a day it could impetuously send a plane crashing into my happy little life and I’d never have the faintest clue of my pending doom.

Worse, it might happen when I was actually up here attempting to work. That means I’d die a fraction of a second before my buddies, not near enough time for them to hold a decent wake, toast my memory, or even express a good bitch about all the money and drinks I died owing them.

If a plane had a horn, the pilot might be thoughtfully honking it as the plane was spiraling into oblivion. I could look out my window and have time to say a quick ass-kissy prayer taking back all the sacrilegious stuff I’d written the last few years.

Just in case, hang on a sec while I take a peek . . . all clear. Whew.

And I stand behind everything I’ve ever written!

This isn’t idle speculation, either. A few years ago I read a news brief that made a great impression on me, and I say that understanding it made a more profound impression on the hapless victim.

It involved the death of a beach jogger who was struck by a little Cessna that needed to make an emergency landing and did so right on top of the jogger. That it was one of those freaky things didn’t make the guy any less dead.

I spent a lot of time thinking about that stranger. A health-minded individual, he may have felt euphoria at having the opportunity to jog along the beach at sundown. He may have been hoping to appear fit and refreshed for an exciting dinner date with a cute girl or boy.

The story lacked detail so I’ll make no prejudicial suppositions.

One thing he likely never considered was the one thing that cost him his life.

He wore earbuds.

He never heard the approaching plane bearing down on him or the hollered warnings of fellow beach combers.

Instead, he probably heard Adele.

I remember thinking, if it were a flying car, a typical driver would have honked the horn, flipped the guy off and executed a routine landing, a better result than executing a routine jogger.

I never followed up, but I would have loved to have heard why the pilot didn’t just ditch in the surf. The only thing I can figure is he must have been wearing dress slacks.

But that was the exact moment when I began advocating mandatory plane horns.

That’s at least one death that could have been prevented if planes came equipped with horns.

So let the swingers have their mile-high club.

I won’t be satisfied until it’s the planes themselves that are horny.