DC Pilot’s licence revoked
See the source article here.
So unless you haven’t heard, there were two people in the plane that flew into restricted airspace surrounding Washington, D.C. last week. One was Jim Shaeffer, a flight instructer, and his student, Troy Martin. Martin had less than 30 hours of flight time under his belt when the incident occurred. At no time during the whole ordeal, did Shaeffer do his duty as the instructor to take control of the plane back from his student to remove them from the situation. Nor had Shaeffer satisified several prerequisites needed to carry passengers. I, for one, have zero sympathy for this guy, and I hope he is never able to get his pilot’s license back. Sorry if I sound harsh, but geez.
Oh, and by the way, from what I can tell from the article, when the plane got lost, they were ~40 miles away from where they thought they should be. I wonder how in the world that’s possible with today’s GPS technology.
Agreed — the instructor is incompetent. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really take much at all to be a flight instructor (or a pilot for that matter). There is, however, a huge difference between a good and great pilot (from what I’ve seen and heard, mostly from my brother-in-law and father, who are pilots).
As for GPSes, they aren’t on every plane, especially those that are used for flight instructing. I was hoping the same as you when I heard about this — that they lose their licenses (didn’t know it was a student though, so not him) and never get them (it) back…
You’d think, though, that you’d bring along a portable GPS unit “just in case”. I guess I’m not up on the rules of flying…so this sort of thing may not be allowed.
It’s certainly allowed, just not always done, as there are plenty of other tools at your disposal (and I’m wondering if it would take a special type of GPS traveling at that speed), but it would seem smart to me.
Unfortunately, based on multiple things mentioned in the article, this 69 year old flight instructor has quite a few bolts loose.