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While watching McSpadden's tutorial, I am again reminded that "Modern aviation is so incredibly safe because" aviators are the first to die when accidents happen.

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New Maine-based, daredevil circus aviation, and flying book for kids, sharing! :

We Own the Sky

Rodman Philbrick. Scholastic Press, $18.99 (208p) ISBN 978-1-338-73629-8

Philbrick’s gripping, coastal-Maine-set historical novel opens in 1924, with 12-year-old Davy Michaud and his 17-year-old sister, Jo, burying their mother—a French Canadian emigrant whose cotton mill job led to a “lung ailment” and death not long after their father perished in a mill accident. Facing eviction from the mill-owned tenement where they live, Davy and Jo are relieved when their mom’s famous aviatrix cousin Ruthie whisks them off to work at her flying circus for the summer. Both captivated and terrified by the high-flying acrobatics, Davy is soon won over by a warm welcome from the daredevil pilots and crew, and the start of his own popular act. But the growing presence of the Ku Klux Klan in Maine jeopardizes the children’s life among the circus’s bustling, closely bonded community, comprising immigrants to the U.S. who cue largely as white. Employing a reminiscing tone, Philbrick (Wild River) uses Davy’s extrasensory first-person narration to describe the Klan’s vitriolic rhetoric and violence, as well as behind-the-scenes details around airborne stunts. Chapters filled with plenty of suspense and danger also, as discussed in an author’s note, convey the terror that the KKK inflicted on immigrants in northern states. Ages 8–12. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Sept.) Publisher's Weekly Nov 2022

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Nov 30, 2022·edited Nov 30, 2022

Thank you for sharing your ideas!

Best of health and best wishes to the Fallows household!

sharing some cool poems about flight, enjoy! :

"Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away."

Carl Sandburg, Poetry Considered, The Atlantic magazine, March 1923.

"Courage is the price that
 Life exacts for granting peace.

The soul that knows it not, knows no release


from little things:


Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,


Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear

The sound of wings."

Amelia Earhart, written circa 1928. Published in Amelia, My Courageous Sister: Biography of Amelia Earhart, 1987.

"Because I Fly"

"I laugh more than other men


I look up and see more than they,


I know how the clouds feel,


What it's like to have the blue in my lap,
to look down on birds,
to feel freedom in a thing called the stick.



Who but I can slice between God’s billowed legs, 
and feel then laugh and crash with His step


Who else has seen the unclimbed peaks?
The rainbow’s secret?
The real reason birds sing?


Because I Fly, 
I envy no man on earth."

Attributed to Grover C. Norwood. Published as author unknown in U.S. Army Aviation Digest May 1983.

"On a windy day, let’s go on flying.
There may be no trees to rest on,
There may be no clouds to ride.
But we’ll have our wings and the wind will be with us,
That’s enough for me,
That’s enough for me."

Yoko Ono, 1967. From an untitled demo recording made in 1967 before Yoko and John got together. The completed song appeared on Yoko’s 1973 album Approximately Infinite Universe.


https://www.aviationquotations.com/poetry.html

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Nov 30, 2022·edited Nov 30, 2022

"Like" all comments: the comments section is the fun part of substack, thanks for posting, all!

Imagine all that we could do if the wars and worldwide conflict did not exist! "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" We could have the resources to carry out your ideas.

We could touch the sky and fly beyond, but our hope has to be to overcome our warlike human nature. We could have all the things we imagine and more. In the 1960's, we knew that there would someday be a world at peace, with no more resources spent on conflict:

https://www.sipri.org/databases/financial-value-global-arms-trade

STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE

The independent resource on global security

"Value of the global arms trade" :

"According to the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database, states that produce official data on the financial value of their arms exports account for over 90 per cent of the total volume of deliveries of major arms. It is therefore possible to attain a rough estimate of the financial value of the total global arms trade using the data in the workbook.

"...the estimate of the financial value of the global arms trade for 2019 was at least $118 billion. However, the true figure is likely to be higher."

"As Americans, citizens of the greatest democratic power on Earth, we must not forget that the largest European conflict since World War II is continuing to burn away in Ukraine," writes

@RadioFreeTom

. https://theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/11/russias-vindictive-rage/672212/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share…

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James, well done: This post so perfectly meshes my interest in aviation and safety culture, and my profession as a health reporter, that I had to upgrade to paid. :)

A few things (sorry to be long, is there a first-comment amnesty?):

- In your first bullet point you mention the informal education that pilots get from av mags and associated media; this instantly recalled to me the old column, "I Learned About Flying From That" — was it in FLYING Magazine? (it might be a podcast now also) — which is just about the most dread-inducing title I can imagine.

- You don't mention but I bet you are aware of it: The infamous Tenerife crash of 1977, possibly still the deadliest air accident in history, which in its aftermath not only created the entire field of crew resource management, but also inspired the movement to create cockpit-like healthcare checklists, to reduce medical errors and hospital infections.

- My interest in safety culture, as a reporter and (currently inactive) pilot isn't abstract. The first line of my logbook reads: "Waynesville, OH to Bill Moss's farm, 0.2." We climbed out in a Cub, turned out of the pattern, and the prop stopped turning. (We landed safely in a field and hitchhiked back.) The crankshaft had fractured, separated, and jammed the prop hub. Afterward the FBO theorized the plane *might* have eaten a fence at some point and gotten a stress shock. Better accountability might have given us all a better day.

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Impressive thinking. Great article.

My own experience as an aviator of 57 years and leading/following various corporate and nonprofit entities suggests that there are MANY places which could benefit from the aviation mindset: “what went wrong?” It’s far more frequent to observe (and I try to avoid) the accusatory and much less useful “whose fault was it?”

Al Ueltschi founded FlightSafety Aviator simulator training as is well known. Less well known are the various Marine Safety and Nuclear Safety simulator training. Similarly, medicine is learning from aviation. Read “Josie’s Story”. The author is a good friend’s daughter. I was invited to hear her speak to the UVA medical teams. Her message: “stop blaming people and start fixing broken systems that allow failure to creep in”. Exactly as we look at aviation issues, there’s almost always a “accident chain” of events preceding a tragedy.

I can’t think of an industry that wouldn’t benefit from adopting What Went Wrong (Lets Fix it).

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I must note that the safety culture was outstanding at my second airline - 35 years - and nonexistent at my first airline - seven years.. I have seen a lot of change.. especially in flight training as I have sponsored a new pilot from zero time to airline employment..

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What is not mentioned is the role of ALPA and other unions that, in my experience, are the true drivers of the push for safety over the years.

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I worked overseas for 6 years and flew extensively during that time. Nearly every time I entered an aircraft I marveled at the miracle of modern flight: that a vehicle so enormous could lift off the ground, fly long distances (often nearly halfway around the world) and settle back down, gently, with such grace and comfort. Often I would enter the aircraft via stairs and not an enclosed ramp - those are the times the experience was the most powerful - looking at the enormous, complex engines; passing through the doorway that, when closed, completely secured the passengers from danger. Air travel has become one of the most boring things we can possibly do - and that is a very good thing indeed.

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founding

I read many years ago that statistically the most dangerous place to be is in your bathtub, where slips and falls account for a large amount of serious injuries and deaths. So, if you're worried about such things, just never take a bath again.

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founding

Great post & great progress over the years. I'd note the gross weight of large airliners can be a million pounds (B747, at 975,000 lbs) or more (A380, at 1.25M lbs).

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The sense that I get of the culture that has brought tremendous growth in safe flying is an emphasis on steady increases in widening the gap between possibly unsafe and increasingly careful, controlled operations. The government agencies can prescribe this but the culture has to be demonstrated and understood by pilots at all levels. Your first two videos make this point well. Fatal accidents re now rare, but deviations and incursions are not, and those are what has to be managed, reduced, and learned from.

Now I am wondering how you will extend these lessons to the mainstream press.

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This is all correct, as far as it goes, but it’s incomplete. While the NTSB is mentioned, the FAA is not discussed, and the post gives the impression that the aviation community has organized this tremendous improvement in safety mostly on its own. The role of the government in achieving this improvement in safety is largely ignored.

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