Covid-19 shelter-in-place rules and GA

sarangan said:
Guys, this is excessive. People are staying home, losing jobs and closing business, and you can't stay off a recreational airplane? It sounds like a problem worse than alcoholism.

I am choosing not to fly during this time, not because GA has anything to do with the virus, but because by the remote chance that something happens to me or my airplane while flying, even if it is entirely someone elses fault, I don't want to tie up valuable medical services and government resources at this time.
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That is one approach. Not mine. But I encourage to do as you wish.

It is not about the plane for me. It is about freedom to do. Nothing I have seen so far is worth giving up my freedom to do.
 
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If we could all just calm down and understand that this isn’t about wielding power, exercising authority or punishing people. It’s simply an attempt to mitigate the spread in order to maybe not overwhelm our health care system which isn’t sized to care for this large of a number of ill people all at the same time. Nobody knows if it will even work but there’s no Plan-B. It’s also not permanent so maybe for the sake of just presenting an appearance of cooperation it might not be such a bad idea to curtail your non-essential pleasure flying for a couple of weeks. I can handle that.
 
Half Fast said:
30% unemployment brings its own health issues and deaths, right along with crime, drug abuse, wrecked families, etc.
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Matthew Rogers said:
@sarangan Answer a question for me, if you will. How many times have you left your house in a car for any reason this past week and how many planned for this week? Include any trips that you had others do on your behalf. Just curious if you can be honest about the numbers as every trip is a potential car crash waiting to happen. Are you reducing your trips to an absolute minimum? I am only leaving the house once every two weeks for the grocery store and once every two weeks for a flight. If GA is as dangerous as a motorcycle, are you complaining about every person that you see out riding their motorcycle as well? Or for that matter, food delivery as they drive a car to deliver a single meal. Just make everyone cook for themselves and only grocery shop once every two weeks max and it is safer than a bunch of food delivery drivers driving around.
So we have a bunch of selfish acts -
Going grocery shopping too often
Driving a car or motorcycle
Getting food delivery
Even going for a hike is probably as dangerous as GA flying
Lets mandate all those be forbidden as well
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I'm still doing shut-in visits and hospital visits. People are sick and dying and they want to see a pastor.
I also bring food to elderly people who are too vulnerable to leave their houses.
I fly at least once every week to an airport within range of the Cub to do services and Communion in hangers and such.
I'm sure there are others out there also "breaking the rules" in service to others.

Judge not, lest ye be judged.

BTW: I'm flying out on Thursday. Someone donated a plane so I can make my rounds.
probably not the spirit of the law, but it does satisfy the letter of the law.
 
Silvaire said:
If we could all just calm down and understand that this isn’t about wielding power, exercising authority or punishing people. It’s simply an attempt to mitigate the spread in order to maybe not overwhelm our health care system which isn’t sized to care for this large of a number of ill people all at the same time. Nobody knows if it will even work but there’s no Plan-B. It’s also not permanent so maybe for the sake of just presenting an appearance of cooperation it might not be such a bad idea to curtail your non-essential pleasure flying for a couple of weeks. I can handle that.
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If somebody can articulate why I should stop flying my own plane then yes , I will do so, if it makes sense and reduces a statistically significant risk of something ...
 
Does anyone know if there are organizations looking for pilots to help fly supplies/materials for Covid-19?
 
Datadriver said:
At the cost of 30% unemployment?
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Everyone is blaming the government for causing the economy to crash but its probably worth clarifying something. My company is considered essential so we're staying open. Some of my employees are on board but others, not so much. These are truck drivers. Some of our customers are down so rather than drive a different run, they're telling me oh I don't want to do that so I'll just stay home and collect unemployment and then I'll come back when its all over. I tell them well if you want to quit without notice that's on you and then we have a little he said she said argument about the difference between a layoff and a quit and my obligation (or lack thereof) to bring them back when its all over. So far all have quickly changed their tune. But the fact remains, there are quite a few workers out there who want to be sidelined without a paycheck. The government may be forcing it, but the citizens aren't helping.
 
Silvaire said:
Nobody knows if it will even work but there’s no Plan-B. It’s also not permanent so maybe for the sake of just presenting an appearance of cooperation it might not be such a bad idea to curtail your non-essential pleasure flying for a couple of weeks. I can handle that.
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There are PLENTY of plan B's, it's just that the politicians who have never had a private sector job (Evers, DeWine) don't understand that by strangling the goose there will be no more eggs.

The publicly funded officials want YOU to sacrifice but will not sacrifice themselves. If they shut your business, they will still want the property tax on it.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
But the fact remains, there are quite a few workers out there who want to be sidelined without a paycheck. The government may be forcing it, but the citizens aren't helping.
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That's fascinating, I had not heard it.
 
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BrianNC said:
TaEDKeg.png
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Of course, Blankfein has no self-interest there at all...

But in all seriousness, a lot of the models and plans to handle this kind of pandemic only require harsh lockdown for 4-6 weeks in order to get things under control, so the projections of 2-4 months aren't necessary. BUT that hinges on two things: 1) people actually follow the guidelines, and 2) the public health system has an efficient method of testing, tracking contacts, and quarantining going forward. This is the path towards minimal overall disruption and getting back to 'normal' as quickly as possible. Unfortunately I don't have a whole lot of faith in either of those two happening given what I've seen so far...
 
Shepherd said:
I'm still doing shut-in visits and hospital visits. People are sick and dying and they want to see a pastor.
I also bring food to elderly people who are too vulnerable to leave their houses.
I fly at least once every week to an airport within range of the Cub to do services and Communion in hangers and such.
I'm sure there are others out there also "breaking the rules" in service to others.

Judge not, lest ye be judged.

BTW: I'm flying out on Thursday. Someone donated a plane so I can make my rounds.
probably not the spirit of the law, but it does satisfy the letter of the law.
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Wait, so you are basically Shepard from Firefly?
 
Juliet Hotel said:
I've got trucks parked today. I could have all them running but some of my drivers would rather sit home not getting paid.
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Well, if you have news outlets blasting 24/7 that bodies are piling and everyone is about to die , some people do get seriously scared even if it is completely unwarranted.

On the other hand, perhaps some of these people actually have good reasons to be cautious like for instance various underlying conditions ( including taking immune-suppressing drugs) that you are not aware of.
 
Warmi said:
Well, if you have news outlets blasting 24/7 that bodies are piling and everyone is about to die , some people do get seriously scared even if it is completely unwarranted.
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Don't shoot the messengers; they're doing their job. It's the infectious disease experts sounding the alarm. They know how catastrophic this is almost certain to become without mitigating the spread of infections by enforced physical isolation.
 
Briantime said:
Has anyone else's fling club prohibited the use of club aircraft during these "lockdowns".
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No. That's absurd. I flew Sunday. Drove to the airport, pulled the 182 out (it hadn't flown in several days) and went flying. Stopped at another airport full (cheaper) full service fuel. Didn't get closer than 15' except to hand the card over. De-Sanitzed card and Pugs after with hand glop. Flew to home airport, put plane away.

I was in more danger getting the mail out of the mailbox at home.

I'm on the board of our club and we've taken reasonable precautions and urge others to do the same.
 
Pugs said:
Stopped at another airport full (cheaper) full service fuel. Didn't get closer than 15' except to hand the card over. De-Sanitzed card and Pugs after with hand glop.
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A virus is essentially a strand of RNA suspended in a ball of grease and avgas is a pretty good degreaser. Just sayin'...
 
Stan Cooper said:
Don't shoot the messengers; they're doing their job. It's the infectious disease experts that know how catastrophic this is almost certain to become without mitigating the spread of infections by enforced physical isolation sounding the alarm.
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They are most certainly not doing their job ... they are mostly spreading panic without any justification.

The infectious disease experts have no reliable data to work with and are constant adjusting critical ratios as the data keeps coming in. We are bouncing between 8% fatality rate and 0.3% with only educated guesses at this point.
And in any case , these experts are only one side of the equation and will always tend to recommend most draconian solutions because their measuring stick is one dimensional I.e they don’t care nor will be held responsible for effects of such measures that could potentially result in societal collapse due to economic and social reasons.

At this point there is no way to say who is right , will have to resolve that question a few months down the line.
 
Warmi said:
Well, if you have news outlets blasting 24/7 that bodies are piling and everyone is about to die , some people do get seriously scared even if it is completely unwarranted.

On the other hand, perhaps some of these people actually have good reasons to be cautious like for instance various underlying conditions ( including taking immune-suppressing drugs) that you are not aware of.
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We have drivers who are at risk, either because of their own health or the health of a family member. We've already offered those guys leaves of absence and/or reduced work loads. Some took it, others did not. For the ones that didn't and wanted to work anyway, we're doing our best to dispatch them places where their contact with customers will be minimal.

That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about young healthy guys with healthy families who have said point blank lay me off. They find out their run is down and they may have to get up a little earlier than normal or work a little later than normal because we've lined up work that's different from that they normally do in order to keep the wheels turning and revenue coming in and they decide they'll just sit home instead. I'm guessing them hearing all about how the gub'ments going to step up and forgive everyone's mortgage and write everyone a check probably isn't helping matters in that respect.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
We have drivers who are at risk, either because of their own health or the health of a family member. We've already offered those guys leaves of absence and/or reduced work loads. Some took it, others did not. For the ones that didn't and wanted to work anyway, we're doing our best to dispatch them places where their contact with customers will be minimal.

That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about young healthy guys with healthy families who have said point blank lay me off. They find out their run is down and they may have to get up a little earlier than normal or work a little later than normal because we've lined up work that's different from that they normally do in order to keep the wheels turning and revenue coming in and they decide they'll just sit home instead. I'm guessing them hearing all about how the gub'ments going to step up and forgive everyone's mortgage and write everyone a check probably isn't helping matters in that respect.
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There you go ... when the whole thing is over you got your quarterly performance self-evaluations already being written for you by your own employees :)
As they say "when the going got tough ..."
 
Stan Cooper said:
With all due respect, I vehemently disagree.
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Prob both of you are right depending on the ‘expert’ or reporter in question. FWIW, my wife has overseen about 10% of Texas covid tests so far (Army Med, she has been directly exposed to 5 or ten positives since the first patients were brought from China). Her 2 cents is that it’s dumb for most, but very serious for some. She hopes that folks who are fat, smoke, etc use this as impetus to make healthy choices. One death in SA...it wasn’t widely mentioned in the press the person who died was already in hospice at the time of contraction. ... On the other hand, she keeps losing staff to quarantines and setting up field hospitals on the coasts. One nurse in the city is on a ventilator. Also, a lot of deaths here every day...from MVCs, GSWs, cancer, regular flu, etc. she said it has been nice to be able to focus on actual traumas in the trauma bays with the typical malingerers generally avoiding the ER.

I’ve been flying every day or two.
 
Warmi said:
They are most certainly not doing their job ... they are mostly spreading panic without any justification.
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Warmi said:
they don’t care nor will be held responsible for effects of such measures that could potentially result in societal collapse due to economic and social reasons.
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Nothing like a little panic to offset the unjustified panic.

I'm seeing this a lot online- we're less than a week into the rollout of significant "lockdown" orders, and people are already saying that the economy is about to be destroyed. Calm down, take a deep breath. We'll get through this. This is a real threat and something has to be done about it. Decisions made today are not permanent for the next 3 months... they will adapt as things change. But in a week when we have 400k cases in the US and over 3000 deaths I don't think there will be much of a stomach to pull back quite yet.
 
Spacedoc said:
Nothing like a little panic to offset the unjustified panic.

I'm seeing this a lot online- we're less than a week into the rollout of significant "lockdown" orders, and people are already saying that the economy is about to be destroyed. Calm down, take a deep breath. We'll get through this. This is a real threat and something has to be done about it. Decisions made today are not permanent for the next 3 months... they will adapt as things change. But in a week when we have 400k cases in the US and over 3000 deaths I don't think there will be much of a stomach to pull back quite yet.
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Oh well, media will start panicking soon enough on the economy front as well.
Just read that ad revenues are being gutted with media sector layoffs starting to roll big time.

Not very surprising really - if you shutdown half of the economy , who gives a damn about their advertising budget.
 
Warmi said:
Oh well, media will start panicking soon enough on the economy front as well.
Just read that ad revenues are being gutted with media sector layoffs starting to roll big time.

Not very surprising really - if you shutdown half of the economy , who gives a damn about their advertising budget.
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Just talked to my best friend/college roommate out of the DFW area. He's an advertising guy and handles a lot of airport advertising (the stuff you see in the terminals). Says they're not getting too crazy just yet, but the advertising companies are essentially extending the contracts by a couple of months on the end to make up for the loss of traffic at this point. I don't envy the marketing/advertising segment when the economy goes south, they're the first ones to get the ax after the hourly front-line workers.
 
I will finally have flying weather tomorrow and plan to take advantage of it. Like the OP I will be flying my own plane out of my own secured hangar. The only thing I will do differently is self serve my fuel. They usually come to the hangar and fill it for the self serve price but, at least for now, I prefer to pump it myself.
 
Briantime said:
Has anyone else's fling club prohibited the use of club aircraft during these "lockdowns". My Illinois based club sent out a notification last week that club aircraft scheduling system will be blocked out until April 7th so no members can use them. I found this irritating on a variety of levels not the least of which is my general dislike of people making my decisions for me and the fact that I do work in an essential industry and have perfectly legitimate use of the aircraft that is now not allowed by the club board...
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Back to the original question (see above), my club in western Washington has NOT shut down. And the FBO we typically buy our 100LL from has not shut down, either. They have stopped flight instruction in aircraft as maintaining 6 feet separation between people just isn't going to happen in a cockpit, but otherwise they are doing business as usual.
 
MBDiagMan said:
I will finally have flying weather tomorrow and plan to take advantage of it. Like the OP I will be flying my own plane out of my own secured hangar. The only thing I will do differently is self serve my fuel. They usually come to the hangar and fill it for the self serve price but, at least for now, I prefer to pump it myself.
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Why? There is valid data on the survival time of the virus on various surfaces under various atmospheric conditions at this point, but there is currently no credible evidence of any cases caused by surface to person transmission. IOW you can't get it because some schmuck touched your plane. And you can't get it because some schmuck made you sign a paper he touched.

You don't want to get within 6' of him, but you don't have to. Leave the clip board on the running board of the fuel truck there Jethro and I'll sign it while you're pumping my gas, then I'll step away and you can do your job while you and I never get within spitting distance of one another. Easy peasy.

Don't get me wrong, self fueling works too and I tend to prefer it for other reasons. But there really isn't a reason to stay in separate zip codes from any other person all the time at this point.
 
Warmi said:
Oh well, media will start panicking soon enough on the economy front as well.
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They well may. But let's be realistic, an adjustment was coming and my own personal and admittedly anecdotal evidence suggests it was already happening.

In my field (trucking), the name of the game in terms of factors limiting company growth has been the ability to attract and keep drivers. Finding freight to haul? Easy. Finding trucks to haul it with and the capital to buy those trucks with? Easy. Finding quality drivers to drive those trucks? Nearly impossible. That's been the game for as long as I've been in it.

In the last six months I've seen that game chance from me trying to find new and creative ways to lure drivers into applying for jobs at my company to me not advertising any available jobs and looking over resumes in my inbox every morning from drivers who are looking to switch companies. This was going on before Covid was part of my vocabulary.

About 2 months ago, I had a meeting with an ex-driver of mine. He was a life long train buff and he worked for me for a few years but then left because he got his dream job working for the railroad. He called and setup a meeting because the railroads are laying off and it was only a matter of time before his number was up and he was going to be on the street. If the railroad is parking trains, something's up. And again this was back when all of us thought coronavirus was something you got from drinking spoiled Mexican beer.

So yeah, the economy is gonna take a swan dive. But I think those balls were in motion way before any of this current mess was thought of. Its true that it might be worse now than it otherwise would have been, but the economy was going to be headline news this year regardless of what virus decided to rear its ugly head.
 
On a slightly different note ....


Is it ok to announce myself as a white Cherokee on downwind in a nearby pilot controlled field? What does POA think?

Ok ok don’t like that topic? How about shock cooling ? LOP?

 
WannFly said:
On a slightly different note ....


Is it ok to announce myself as a white Cherokee on downwind in a nearby pilot controlled field? What does POA think?

Ok ok don’t like that topic? How about shock cooling ? LOP?

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I'm guessing that you skipped over "slipping with flaps" because high-wing.
 
WannFly said:
On a slightly different note ....


Is it ok to announce myself as a white Cherokee on downwind in a nearby pilot controlled field? What does POA think?

Ok ok don’t like that topic? How about shock cooling ? LOP?

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Announcing as a white Cherokee sounds like a potential answer to the 2020 US Census questionnaire!
 
Freelance CFI/CFII. Our state is on the "lockdown" until Apr 6. Local FBO is closed. Private club I instruct at (different airport) is still open for business. Airport owner said it is up to the instructors if they want to continue flying or not and rentals are still allowed. He did postpone the private ground school for 3 weeks. 2 instructors are flying today and 3 over the weekend look to have some flights with students.

My youngest has asthma and I'm not taking any chances so I told all my students I am obeying the 'stay at home' order and not flying for 2 weeks. This didn't make some of them too happy, but that's the way it is.
 
Stan Cooper said:
Ewww!
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Why there is a box of nitrile gloves in my car when I go to fill up (and was doing that even before this whole thing started...I hate the smell of diesel fuel on my hands after refueling...).

Sensible precautions...and wash your hands (that we needed to be told to do this boggles the mind...really?)
 
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