Kind of an interesting situation. I wonder how different it’d be if he wasn’t in a cirrus. Know what I mean?
Not trying to start anything, but if he was in a Mooney, or a Piper, or a Bo, I wonder how the different factions would act.
I can only speak for my n=1, but I assure you my aspersions of this poser have
nothing to do with the happenstance he was doing it from a Cirrus. The angle that drew my interest to this thread wasn't the Cirrus, it was the appropriation and misapplication of certain military formation flight mannerisms and terminology endemic to military training circles. These indicators jumped out at me immediately and I became interested as we on this side have a vested interest not to make such unprofessional misapplication of airmanship, and thus lose credibility as military contributors to the avocation. It was furthermore no surprise to learn the dude has not in fact ever been a military pilot, which was both elating to me and immediately re-alarming at the same time.
I didn't note or recall the portion about him declaring an emergency on behalf of the other airplane. Again, that's another one straight out of the military UPT playbook when dealing with
solo, unqualified, student formation students. This cat has either been trolling and/or appropriating a military acquaintance's anecdotes about their experience in military aviation, or the subject in question was a UPT student himself, washed out of military training, and is subsequently using his short exposure as a student to appropriate and misapply these procedures in his civilian flying.
Either way, from an FAA perspective, the declaration of an emergency on the non-participating aircraft's behalf is the final straw for me. The FSDO has got to get involved on that one, and the tower needs to get sucked into the process as well for enabling that breach of safety of flight. The non-consent on the part of the Arrow pilot to formation flying is an easy softball as it is, the declaration of an emergency for the non-participating aircraft is just the FSDO asleep at the wheel frankly, especially considering the spectacle they made of themselves when they diverted resources to accost 6PC (yes, different FSDOs, but the point stands).
At any rate, rest easy, I would make the same comments if the guy had been flying a Bo or a Piper.