Crack is a bad example as the FAA could immediately request a drug screen for said example.
You can’t stop every potential bad scenario from never happening. Don’t eat in the cockpit, you might choke and crash killing passengers.
If the job of the FAA and every governmental body is to make sure nothing bad happens, ever, then no one should be allowed to do anything.
**** happens. Bad people to bad stuff. People fly without licenses or medicals already in part 91 operations. Hell, we all read about the instructor that kept instructing after he failed multiple proficiency checks, had already wrecked a plane and had his certificate taken away.
People still have medical events when issued class 1,2 or 3 medicals.
It ultimately comes down to the person/pilot practicing good and sound judgment. Given we are all human, that will never be at 100%.
Given the barriers of entry for flying, I’m much more concerned about the average driver and how easily drivers licenses are handed out vs being concerned with the average general aviation pilots flying for leisure.
Probably better for another thread though…
How about the student pilot, Chad Wilson, that flew him and his girlfriend to Las Vegas in a Piper Malibu and got caught in bad thunderstorms, causing him to drive the plane right into the ground due to spatial disorientation?
Yes, he was a student pilot. First mistake.
His CFI said "He (Chad) seemed to fly well, but was anti-authority and impulsive with tendencies of pushing the aircraft he was flying to fly fast with higher than normal power settings".
He had issues getting his medical, which he received a denial for in the end.
Why the denial?
This guy had two misdemeanor convictions for
DWI in 2007 and 2008 and two felony convictions for
DWI-third or more in 2012 and 2016, plus violated his felony probation by failing to provide evidence of AA attendance to his probation officer.
The pilot had purchased a Cessna 182, which he was doing his training in. Upon hearing of the denial, the CFI quit flying with the pilot.
He then purchased a Piper Malibu, despite his application for a medical certificate being denied.
The first leg of the flight was uneventful. He had a fuel stop about halfway to Vegas. However, he failed to obtain an updated weather briefing prior to leaving the fuel stop. There were thunderstorms forming along the 2nd leg of his route, with towering cumulus as high as FL390.He couldn't go above them, and by the time he could try to go around them, the storm basically swallowed him up quicker than he could come up with a sound decision.
Here's someone who shouldn't be within 20 feet of the controls of an aircraft. Yet despite what the feds did (and they actually got it right this time), he flat out didn't care. He was going to fly anyway, "big gubment don't tell me what to do!". In the end, his anti-authority attitude got both him and his girlfriend killed.
If I still am flying one at that time (just turned 62) I hope that the restrictions relax before that time comes.
