Hacker

Envy is an ugly emotion.

Except for the fact that the pie size is not fixed....especially in a time when so much "free money" has been pumped into the system by the Fed. So, no...someone getting richer does not mandate someone else getting poorer.

Okay, thanks for clarifying that.

Perhaps I didn't ask the right question in my previous post, so let me ask from a different angle. Is your comment is a criticism of the gatekeeping that exists (and has long existed) in the warbird community which is a barrier to new people getting involved, or a comment on the Collings organization, specifically, with respect to how they operated their Wings of Freedom Tour?

Not that I'm aware of with the fidelity required to be of any value. Most of the checkout and annual re-examination processes rely on actual butt-in-the-seat experience. We are actually somewhat fortunate that in the last 25 years there have been a bunch of fighters that have been modified into 2-seat, dual control versions which allow real hands-on instruction in them. Before that, the traditional method of getting checked out to fly any of the big piston fighters involved a whole bunch of time flying the T-6, and a checkride where you takeoff, fly, and land the T-6 from the back seat. This was apparently supposed to provide such a poor view on takeoff and landing that it simulated the long nose of Mustangs, Corsairs, etc. Even flying the T-6 itself is considered a "harder" airplane to fly than most of the pig piston fighters because of some of its bad habits both in flight and on takeoff/landing. The joke in the warbird community is that to prepare yourself for flying the T-6, go get checked out in a Mustang or a Bearcat. In the larger airplanes, the multiengine stuff, the key is still to have relevant taildragger experience prior to getting checked out....but you still need time in the seat with the engines running to actually get a checkout.

Which is kind of the core problem, IMHO. "Black lives matter" as a concept is really not controversial in any way. Yes, anyone who believes that all humans are individuals and of equal objective value philosophically can confidently agree with that. We might disagree on the degree to which the statement relies on an unproven implication that society inherently values the lives of individuals with a certain skin pigment less than other individuals with a different skin pigment, but that's leading us down a different path of discussion Unfortunately, "Black Lives Matter", the organization and movement is something that is completely different and stands for something that is completely different than the plain English phrase means (as evidenced by their now-deleted "what we believe" webpage. So, just like with a lot of sophistry used in the name of advocacy, not being in support of "Black Lives Matter" (the organization) gets to be weaponized against whomever states it as "racist" (or whatever other word from the deplorables litany one wishes to arm themselves with) by intentionally co-mingling the concept with the org.

There are bad actors who make bad decisions in the judicial system, that have resulted in unequal and unfair treatment, obviously. To distort that to mean the system itself is fundamentally flawed, or that the system is rigged against a particular identity group of people, is not a logical step. Even worse, to declare that the current system is so broken that it has to be torn down and replaced with something more "fair", without being able to specify what exactly is broken with the current system, or what the specifics of that other system that would replace it might be, is a bunch of postmodernist nonsense. BLM isn't at all interested in simply ending police brutality.

Not by a long shot. BLM is protesting for a forced Marxist-style transfer of social power and financial wealth from whom they perceive are the "haves" to whom they perceive are the "have nots"...in the name of "equity" (e.g. equality of outcome; where we all have the same social power and we all have the same financial means). That has absolutely zero to do with the status of being "equal before the law", which is what actual "equality" is in a western democracy. Equality and liberty in a free society comes with no promise of social status or financial wealth, good or bad.

There have already been positive ripple effects from this accident. The warbird organization I fly with has twice in the last 12 months tightened up its training and qualification requirements, and changed its supervisory/oversight strategy and responsibilities. They have even implemented their plan to have Big Blue-style "no notice" on-site inspections of individual units' compliance with organizational and FAA regulations. Of course, there are some key leadership positions in that organization who are retired USAF O-6s, and their solution to the problem (the problem of the FAA whipping out their speculum and hysteroscope to inspect other warbird ride operations) is to bring over the regulatory and supervisory mechanisms that "worked"(?) in the Air Force. Personally, I don't mind; I'd rather deal with a little Big Blue-style bureaucracy than have the FAA go all full retard and basically stop most warbird flying like has happened in the UK and elsewhere. The fact is, if the LHFE goes away a significant number of flying warbirds will never fly again. I know of several famous, rare warbirds that go barnstorming every summer that, without the money from rides or a Paul Allen-style benefactor will never fly again.

Do you have personal experience with trying to fly for Collings? If so, I'm curious what the circumstances of that were.

I think we have to be skeptical of that number based on the evidence that is out there from the investigation. To wit: It isn't outrageous for someone to claim 1,000 hours in a year; I know numerous airline guys who hit this number somewhat regularly. Definitely unusual for a non-military, non-airline guy to be getting that amount of hours, but I wouldn't find it impossible to believe. It is, however, not possible that he flew 5,200 hours in one year. This would mean he was logging 14 hours of flight time per day, every day, for 365 days. And since he reported only 200 hours of time during the "last 6 months" of that year...well, apparently Mac was logging augmented crew time while he was sleeping. But, even that first number has to be taken in perspective of other evidence, like: So, if the B-17 was flying under 300 hours per year total, even if you make the assumption that Mac was flying every single one of those hours (which we know he wasn't - I personally know people who flew 909 during that timeframe, and not with Mac in the seat), where were the other 700-ish hours per year coming from? This would require him to fly *double* the amount of hours he was theoretically getting in the B-17 in some other aircraft on the tour. Remember, Mac was not a professional pilot at any point during his career and Collings was the only flying he was doing. The evidence here shows that there was some amount of "Parker P-51" time going on here. How much? Tough to say...but it could be a substantial amount based on the self-reporting from the FAA medicals. He had to understand that the hour report to the FAA on your medical is an official attestation of your flight experience. I admit, I bought into the Mac mystique too. The way he was spoken about by other pilots, as well as the way he spoke and carried himself, I'd have thought he was some old 'Nam vet, or old fire-bomber pilot, or retired airline guy. I was surprised to learn in this report that he'd only had his multiengine rating since 1999, and that he'd never actually had a professional flying career. The data here, as well as his actions during the emergency, give me many many questions about the authenticity of basically anything said about his credentials or experience.

The root of the issue lies in what people interpret "treated equally" to mean. The philosophers upon whose tenets western society has been built interpret that to mean "all individuals treated equally before the law". Unfortunately that is not a definition that is shared across the political and philosophical spectrum, and that is the crux.

You are. It isn't about the dictionary definition of equity. Just as how the social justice crowd has re-defined "racism" to hinge on power, "equity" has been re-defined to mean equality of outcome, usually with respect to money but also frequently with respect to social power. So, when the term is used in the context of that video, they are talking about social power, and not fair treatment in front of the law. It is a loaded codeword that is intended to sound like "equality" to those not paying attention. This new definition is used commonly in the social science sphere. Here's what Bret Weinstein, a self-identified progressive university professor says about equity:

That is not what "equity" means. It has nothing to do with "fair treatment". Equity means "equality of outcome".

So, leadership is telling us that they either still won't bring themselves to acknowledge that they are both the cause and the solution of the actual root problem, or they're so steeped in their own body odor that they *still* don't know it. They're still focusing on treating the symptoms of the cancer rather than cutting out the cancer itself. Brilliant, fellas. Just brilliant.

Awesomeness like this does not belong in the "What's wrong with the Air Force?" thread. 🥃

Well, aside from being a former "fighter guy" I also have spent the last 5 years wrangling #300,000 airliners around, so I'd like to think I have a little insight there as well. I took that photo I posted of a poster on the wall of where I work. Nowhere did I say it wasn't an area where people have and do make airmanship mistakes. I was making (theoretical) fun of a military branch, who kills people and breaks things in some of the most hazardous-to-life actions and locations in human existence, allowing the force's skills, training, and currency to degrade to a point where something as basic as a visual approach becomes "more challenging" than the mission things.

I can't wait for the day when Big Blue starts shooting off the same platitudes that the airline industry does about, "visual approaches are the hardest thing we do".

This is exactly the kind of "system failure" that the SIB and AIB were designed to identify. Will the AF wake up and take responsibility for its own leadership and decisionmaking failures that set this poor kid up for failure and, ultimately, his death?

Fake news. Huggy has a Jitterbug phone from the back of AARP magazine.

It is perfectly clear what it does, it's all right there in the article: "Its container-centric management environment orchestrates computing, networking, and storage on behalf of user workloads and allows for the deployment of complex microservice based applications with complete automation." To me, this sounds like it was written by the greatest OPR-bullshit artist of all time to describe the mail sorting room at Initech.

I can attest that SoCal Approach will "assist" you by keeping you high prior to your turn to final even to this day. Flaps 40, medium brakes, exit at Taxiway E. "No problem, GI!" But there's something fun about putting a 300,000-pound fatty into 5700', then cocktails in Newport Beach in an hour.

Only valid when the investigation hasn't actually been completed yet and the General doing the speaking is relaying "facts" that weren't in evidence. 🙂

The entire point of The Enlightenment was that logic and reason could be used to transcend individual human experiences and thus individuals could have empathy for that which we did not experience ourselves. So, it doesn't require a person of another gender, another race, another [insert characteristic here] to be present for any other human to comprehend, understand, and empathize with their perspective and/or lived experiences. You don't actually have to feel childbirth to understand what it is like. You don't have to be a "POC" to understand the experience of what it must be like, whatever that is supposed to mean. If you want to argue that people of different *cultures* bring different perspectives to the table, that's perfectly valid...but to say that immutable characteristics are responsible for (or an avatar for) differences in thought and character is precisely the kind of "logic" that was used to undergird actual tribalism (or racism, if you'd rather frame it that way) for hundreds (thousands?) of years. No two humans are alike, regardless of immutable characteristics, so Enlightenment logic on the issue is a truism for all humans to be able to form social groups. People of the same immutable characteristics can have a widely divergent set of experiences, beliefs, and character, just as people of a wide variety of immutable characteristics can all believe in the same orthodoxy. Diversity of immutable characteristics is not an avatar for diversity of perspectives, simply put.

Again, I agree that diversity of thought is vital...but that's not what any of this is about, and that's not what my comment was about that you responded to originally. You're sidestepping the larger issue, that the AF's focus on diversity of immutable human characteristics (which is the opposite of the teamwork concept of us all adopting the identity of "Airman") has literally zero to do with the cognitive diversity, or diversity of thought, that you're talking about. Even worse is the belief that must exist to support the idea, that immutable human characteristics are an avatar for an individual's thoughts, beliefs, character, or abilities. If the USAF wants to have a diversity of immutable characteristics in the crew force, for whatever social goal they seek, that's fine by me. What's objectionable is when that objective is sold as improving the ability to accomplish the mission (e.g. "diversity is our strength")...again, a statement which has never been put to a falsification test, and won't be because it exists to support an ideological perspective that has already decided what is "good."