Reading some earlier posts containing words such as "legal advice, crime against, etc." made a thought crossing my mind again.
Are all helicopter pilots criminals???
I used to work for a company where there wasn't a single pilot, besides me of course
, who hasn't been accused at least once of offending against some kind of air law.
In most cases the company lawyer, by that time you want him to be considered working full time
, was smarter than the counterparty and only in some cases the pilots were actually convicted.
We had all sorts of accusations: flying too low, flying too high, non-authorized off-airport landing, noise complaints, flying in svfr without having the svfr minimas, endangering a crowd of curious onlookers, hindering police work, flying into restricted areas which haven't been established when we departed. etc....
For some reason in all those cases I had the impression that for helicopter pilots it's no longer "innocent until proven guilty" but "guilty until proven innocent". Even some local politicians spoke up and announced on public TV that "I will personally take charge that those pilots are brought to book".
Well, well, is this antipathy against us pilots justified, is it because in the past
we failed to speak up to acchieve our own interests but were always more concerned about cooperating with the rest of the world (mainly school teachers
coming home from work at 1:00 pm) or is it really just people being jealous????
Me, for my part, I'm sick and tired of people complaining about noise made by helicopters, about helicopters being a potential risk for nuclear power plants and I'm totally fed up with having to ask some
"Greenies" before I want to go some place.
Comments????