SAD NEWS

I just returned home from watching the debate (and having a beer afterwards) to discover an email from a pilot friend of mine. She told me that an airplane identical to the one I co-own — a Sky Arrow, a rare, very light Italian import (which you can see to the right) — had crashed into the ocean over the Malibu pier at about 5:15pm on Tuesday.

I wanted to post this for any of you who might hear that the airplane I fly was in a crash at the airport I fly out of. It wasn’t our airplane, and I wasn’t one of the pilots.

But I know the pilot of the aircraft very well. I do not believe I know the passenger. The cause of the crash at this time remains unknown, but both aboard were airlifted to UCLA medical center with “severe head trauma.”

That’s the horrible news.

The good news comes from an email update I received from fellow pilots. Perhaps initial reports were somewhat overstated. My friend, the accident pilot, has been moved from the emergency room into ICU, is conscious, and at last report does not require surgery. The passenger is said to be in slightly better condition, and was also conscious. That would be a tremendous relief. The airplane is a total loss, but that’s just a piece of plastic and aluminum…

Fast action on the part of two ordinary people undoubtedly saved both of their lives. We can also credit the world’s best trauma treatment, because both of them got to top-flight medical care within the “Golden Hour,” and if the latest I received is true, it looks like both will survive.

I’m embarrassed to print my final thought, but it might give you some insight on how the pilot’s mind works upon hearing such news. My first thought is the hope that my friend isn’t at fault in any way. My second thought — and I am ashamed to admit it — is that on some level I hope he was. There’s nothing you can do about some freak accident, the kind of thing where you find yourself standing before the Pearly Gates, and St. Peter pats you on the back and says, “Tough break, kid.”

But what I secretly hope for is something that I can point to and say, “Ah, see? I never would have done that.” That hope brings my fate back under my own control. The first hope outweighs the second by a wide margin, but deep down inside I want to see something that would tell me this would not have happened to me, because I am a very conservative pilot and I have recoiled in horror watching other people (not this guy) take risks I would never take. My hope is that will let me achieve my lifelong goal of dying as The World’s Oldest (Not Boldest) Pilot.

We’ll know more soon. The only thing that matters is that these guys get to go home to the lives that they led before they took off. All the rest of it is speculation. I’ll update this when I know more, but my main thought was that I didn’t want anyone to worry. I want to find out exactly what happened so that I can make sure that this particular gremlin — whatever it was — does not bite my precious hide.

But even after seeing something that hits about a close as it can — my friend, in an identical airplane, at my home airport — not for an instant did I ever have even the most fleeting thought of hanging this up.

I live up there, you see. When I’m down here I’m just visiting y’all.