'Bit of a lad!'
Anyone who has been in the aviation industry for any length of time will have come across people who have a rather cavalier attitude to rules and regs. They range from 'he's a bit of a lad', 'Old So-and-so - he's a character', via 'bloody cowboy' and 'what a villain'. But what do we do?
In this thread much reference has been made to the CFI who initiated the process and which of those categories he falls into is anyone's guess. Maybe the coroner will winkle that out. I presume that is Mr Walker Snr's hope and the reason for alerting us to the inquest date.
The young Mr Walker was a victim of the enthusiasm and circumstances that most of us had at that age. (My first flying instructor, Rex Larsen of Skegness) drummed it into us that the most dangerous part of our flying careers would be between 100 and 300 hrs on our new PPLs! How right he was.
I took took off in a PA 28 with three ATPLs, (in my 100-300 band) well over max and was rather surprised at it's reluctance to lift off and how large the Thruxton club house windows appeared as we skimmed the roof.
For a couple of years I flew as Co- with a pilot who was regarded as 'an accident looking for somewhere to happen'. In a couple of engine failures (one EFATO) he was quite competent, but the number of mini-crises he created. was legion. One night, listening to a radio news report of a twin-turbo prop that had ditched offshore near an island, two of us at the crew room table, in chorus, said the same name! The next evening TV news showed him being toasted by holidaymakers at a holiday cottage - as the hero.
(You've guessed it, fuel starvation, but the enquiry was months away)
There will always be people like this and I suppose we should all speak up before other people like young Mr Walker get suckered in to dangerous situations.
One positive outcome of this thread is that 'Fran' the 19 yr old PPL has learned something from the sometimes heated comments.