Balloon Pilot Who Killed 16 in Texas on Drugs, Had Many DWIs

denverpilot said:
The people who need "caught" do not care at all about your limits. Not in the slightest.

You know this. You've met some at some time in your life, I'm sure.
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Of course I've met some, but there would be more if there were no limits.
 
FIFY

Deal. I will tell you a good story about the last time I was in Montana. It has to do with a streetbike, a load of booze, easy sleazy women and female midget wrestlers.
 
Everskyward said:
Of course I've met some, but there would be more if there were no limits.
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You think so? I don't. Maybe a short peak of a few who think they're doing something trendy, you know, the "I'm bad because it's cool", but the number of repetitive sociopaths is pretty consistent. And rules don't really do much about them.

We tend to lock up all sorts of people who probably wouldn't harm anyone if drugs were unregulated, but that's about money. Having the most incarcerated people in the first world doesn't seem the goal of society, but it's what all the rules get us.
 
mscard88 said:
FIFY

Deal. I will tell you a good story about the last time I was in Montana. It has to do with a streetbike, a load of booze, easy sleazy women and female midget wrestlers.
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Photos or it didn't happen! LOL
 
Everskyward said:
Yup. There are things that I don't do because I don't want to be caught, not because I'm a wonderful person.
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Same here. There are MANY things I don't do because I don't want caught by law enforcement but would do otherwise and no one would be harmed by those actions.
 
Everskyward said:
Yup. There are things that I don't do because I don't want to be caught, not because I'm a wonderful person.
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Guess the nuns must have got some of my attention (when they weren't whacking over the knuckles w/ a ruler) and 'learnt' me something, 'cause I feel the same way.
 
Joshuajayg said:
Same here. There are MANY things I don't do because I don't want caught by law enforcement but would do otherwise and no one would be harmed by those actions.
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That's the difference between this balloon idiot and you -- the rules just keep you from doing things that harm no one else. They don't care if they harm someone else. And the rules don't stop them.
 
denverpilot said:
That's the difference between this balloon idiot and you -- the rules just keep you from doing things that harm no one else. They don't care if they harm someone else. And the rules don't stop them.
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Rules will never stop everyone, but they stop some people, especially if they get caught or are worried about getting caught.
 
Everskyward said:
Rules will never stop everyone, but they stop some people, especially if they get caught or are worried about getting caught.
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Very few. We're back to the effectiveness argument. Prove how many it actually stops vs how many it costs real opportunities lost via massive debt to pay for it all.
 
Everskyward said:
I'm not going along with the argument that just because people don't follow rules, there shouldn't be any.
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I think it is a question of trade offs. When you enact a regulation you often get some of the intended effect, like decreasing the number of drug impaired balloon pilots, but there are always the unintended and often unnoticed effects. In the case of government regulatory action, these are often things like decreasing the number of non drug addled balloon pilots, increased costs of balloon rides, etc.

In this country, with news headline driven knee jerk regulation, the value of the intended effects is often way over-valued and the unintended effects are way undervalued or outright ignored (essentially valued as 0)

So I would agree that the intended effect is not zero or valueless, but I think the balancing is usually so poorly considered that it is usually best to stay away from additional government regulation.
 
denverpilot said:
Very few. We're back to the effectiveness argument. Prove how many it actually stops vs how many it costs real opportunities lost via massive debt to pay for it all.
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We'll have to agree to disagree, because I think it's far more than "very few". In this thread, in a few minutes, others besides me confessed that they would do certain prohibited things if not for the fear of getting caught.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
I think it is a question of trade offs. When you enact a regulation you often get some of the intended effect, like decreasing the number of drug impaired balloon pilots, but there are always the unintended and often unnoticed effects. In the case of government regulatory action, these are often things like decreasing the number of non drug addled balloon pilots, increased costs of balloon rides, etc.
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As far as this example is concerned, the guy wasn't just a balloon pilot. He was holding out and giving commercial rides to the public.
 
Everskyward said:
We'll have to agree to disagree, because I think it's far more than "very few". In this thread, in a few minutes, others besides me confessed that they would do certain prohibited things if not for the fear of getting caught.
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Prohibited things that would not harm others. An important distinction when spending billions.
 
Everskyward said:
As far as this example is concerned, the guy wasn't just a balloon pilot. He was holding out and giving commercial rides to the public.
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And plenty of people knew it. Can't convince me nobody around him knew he had multiple DWIs and didn't say boo to anyone about it.

If you want the law to be effective, it's a lot easier if the "rulemakers" actually share data. It's not like that is particularly difficult in the modern era.

Court records of DWI automatically found by a computer at FAA and actual investigation would have taken care of it. Had four chances over many years.

If the system misses something that obvious, more rules doesn't fix it.
 
denverpilot said:
And plenty of people knew it. Can't convince me nobody around him knew he had multiple DWIs and didn't say boo to anyone about it.
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People often keep their mouths shut. They don't want to open a can of worms. We've had discussions like that on this board.

denverpilot said:
Court records of DWI automatically found by a computer at FAA and actual investigation would have taken care of it. Had four chances over many years.
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It would have, but do they search the records of pilots with no medical? You give consent on the medical application.
 
Everskyward said:
It would have, but do they search the records of pilots with no medical? You give consent on the medical application.
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Doubt it. Getting good value out of all the spending on enforcing these laws. Must need some more to fix stuff. It'll only take a couple more million bucks. No worries. :)
 
Just my opinion but I think only commercial pilot engaging in commercial operation should have medical. Regardless of category or class. So I think this guy should be required to have a medical. Anyone not actively engaged in commercial passenger ops shouldn't have to have one.
 
Lindberg said:
How much regulation would you tolerate to save 16 people every 20 years? How many new personnel should the FAA hire to implement those regulations? Remember it has to be 100% effective, otherwise you might only save 9 or 10.
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And if your kid was one of the 16? Would you shrug? Statistics are numbers.. until they happen to you. This guy was operating a commercial aviation venture, and had it involved wings, instead of a balloon, he would have needed a medical and a 135 cert. I dont oppose drivers license medicals for amateurs but I have no beef with oversight for commercial ops.
 
I guess that I am a bit of an oddball in that I am for third class medical reform that would remove the requirement for a large number of pilots to have medicals but at the same time I think that anyone who pilots any sort of aircraft while carrying paying passengers should have a medical and the operation at minimum should require an LOA with periodic surveillance.
 
SkyDog58 said:
I guess that I am a bit of an oddball in that I am for third class medical reform that would remove the requirement for a large number of pilots to have medicals but at the same time I think that anyone who pilots any sort of aircraft while carrying paying passengers should have a medical and the operation at minimum should require an LOA with periodic surveillance.
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Just from a devil's advocate point of view, you realize we've had more people with first class medicals drop dead each year (in flight and on the ground) than people who've harmed anyone via their medical issues while operating a commercial flight...

There's a reason there's two pilots up front on most flights carrying people for hire. There's a bunch actually, but one of them is that sudden medical incapacitation is still a "thing" even amongst first class medical holders.

But the best measurement would be to know exactly how many pilots find out about major medical problems at their FAA exam every six months vs their first trip to the ER or family doc complaining of not feeling well in between those visits. We don't get those numbers.

Government entity PR being what it is, to get more loan funding and grow, if FAA docs were finding stuff at a rate significantly higher than that first ER visit, it'd be published in glossy multicolor pamphlets touting the numbers. It isn't.

So we can make some reasonably educated guesses as to how effective the first class requirement is. Maybe it scares people into going to their own docs though.

As far as substance abuse goes, I suspect any alcoholic in my family could easily hide it from a second class requirement without someone close to them reporting them. They become expert at it. (Other substances, not as easily.) Addicts are incredibly creative when it comes to hiding their behavior.
 
so let me get this straight....This balloon captain can bring 16 people up in the air with him, for hire, on somthing that only has one axis of control and having had 5 DWI's and drug abuse issues. All the while someone who took some adderall as a kid can't solo a 172? Yeah that makes sense.:eek:
 
Lowflynjack said:
Even if they had all of the rules in place, this guy still launched when he knew the area was IFR.
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Well, I haven't seen whether he had done his six HiTS in the last six months yet. But how hard can it be for a commercial operator to divert and just go fly an ILS somewhere? The chase vehicle has to pick them up anyway.
 
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midcap said:
so let me get this straight....This balloon captain can bring 16 people up in the air with him, for hire, on somthing that only has one axis of control and having had 5 DWI's and drug abuse issues. All the while someone who took some adderall as a kid can't solo a 172? Yeah that makes sense.:eek:
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Funny thing is in a real humans eyes, they would say that the rules stopping that kid from flying the 172 are dumb and should be changed.

In the FAAs eyes, they should now make a ton more rules so anyone who even took a Tylenol cant get a medical.
 
denverpilot said:
That's the difference between this balloon idiot and you -- the rules just keep you from doing things that harm no one else. They don't care if they harm someone else. And the rules don't stop them.
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Rules also keep you from harming others because you think your actions are harmless, but they aren't.

Speeding is a classic example. In an aviation environment, cloud clearances. They sure seem arbitrary until you get an urgent traffic call while still in the clouds.

People like to think they are experts in all subject matters, yet it's not hard AT ALL to find examples where the assumptions are totally wrong.
 
James331 said:
Funny thing is in a real humans eyes, they would say that the rules stopping that kid from flying the 172 are dumb and should be changed.

In the FAAs eyes, they should now make a ton more rules so anyone who even took a Tylenol cant get a medical.
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You are 100% correct.
 
denverpilot said:
If the system misses something that obvious, more rules doesn't fix it.
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Oh, just move to Somalia already. Will solve two problems.

1) You won't have to deal with the government you so desperately wish to avoid.

2) We won't have to listen to you chime in with useless nonsense like this on every thread, because there is one fiber link that serves about 5% of the country.

 
172andyou said:
Oh, just move to Somalia already. Will solve two problems.

1) You won't have to deal with the government you so desperately wish to avoid.

2) We won't have to listen to you chime in with useless nonsense like this on every thread, because there is one fiber link that serves about 5% of the country.

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Because any reduction in our over over bloated mother may I government would turn us into Somalia..


implied-facepalm-implied-facepalm-demotivational-poster-1259858393.jpg
 
PPC1052 said:
Well, I haven't seen whether he had done his six HiTS in the last six months yet. But how hard can it be for a commercial operator to divert and just go fly an ILS somewhere? The chase vehicle has to pick them up anyway.
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Huh? You think he could have diverted and flew an ILS in a balloon?
 
James331 said:
Because any reduction in our over over bloated mother may I government would turn us into Somalia..
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You're so very close to grasping the obvious: Tightening the rules around commercial balloons wouldn't turn us into a police state either.
 
I would say adding more burdensome regulation to an area that is otherwise doing fine because of one incident isn't warranted. Now if it starts to become a pattern that's another thing...

But then the other thing, when people talk about regulation in general they tend to argue it as a linear scale- either more or less regulation. What about regulation that makes sense and accomplishes the goal while being as un-burdensome as possible? What would we even reasonably do about this guy? He was already violating all sorts of rules and that didn't stop anything. What would work? More ramp checks?
 
Doggtyred said:
And if your kid was one of the 16? Would you shrug? Statistics are numbers.. until they happen to you. This guy was operating a commercial aviation venture, and had it involved wings, instead of a balloon, he would have needed a medical and a 135 cert. I dont oppose drivers license medicals for amateurs but I have no beef with oversight for commercial ops.
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If my kid was one of the 16, I'd certainly be a lot more possibly invested. And I should probably be counted on to cone up with emotional, rather than practical, solutions to what I would emotionally perceive to be a problem, whether or not it actually was.
 
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