I was going to relay my own story of a pilot's ineptitude, arrogance, ignorance and disrespect on this particular day - then I deleted it.

In my 4 years both working and flying in GA I have the pleasure of being consistently reminded of these traits in many who are associated with it.

On reflection I choose to stay in the aviation arena, without particularly needing to and despite all the nutters, moaners, know it alls, willy wavers and the mercenary behaviour I've seen, here I am.

Either it can't be all that bad, I'm one of them or maybe I've just given up caring?

Hang on, the original post said: and the OP later added: So, someone took off at 1000 for a cross country to land at 1145 and, mindful of the fact that he/she did not want to cause unnecessary disturbance transited at 3000ft. How is that in any way insensitive?

One should assume that there will be no pubs open in Ireland on Good Friday. Yet every year on Good Friday there are groups of confused British men on stag parties outside pubs in Dublin wondering why they aren't open! The reason is simply because they 'aren't from around these parts' and don't know our customs.

Who says the pilot was British and knew anything about Rememberance Sunday? If I was flying to the UK that weekend, I'd certainly not know about any significance of 11:00 on Remembrance Sunday. I know you guys wear poppys on Remembrance Sunday (which I'd always assumed to be a British thing but only recently learnt that it orginiated in the USA), but had no knowledge of the time significance.

Secondly I don't see many War Memorial sites marked on the 500K chart, so how would one know which sites to avoid?

Is 3000ft now enough high enough to cause little to no noise?

There seems to be an attitude here that all GA should should stop at this time, and all cross country flights (as this one seems to have been) should arrange to either land enroute before 11:00 and take off again afterwards, or arrange that their flight is finished by 11:00 or doesn't start until that time. Does the same apply to roads? Do all the roads in the UK become empty at 11:00?

As an unaffected spectator to this debate, I'm really at a loss to understand what this pilot did wrong. A group of people were having a moment of silence, and while everyone was being really quite they could just about hear an aircraft more than half a mile above their heads. The pilot had no way of knowing that there was a gathering at this site because they didn't know that where was any site there, and even if they did, they flew quite high to make sure that there would be no noise foot print above normal background noise.

dp

True,

But their big mistake was he/she, either English or a hapless foreigner, was in an egg beater - the most insinuating noisiest footprint a/c around.

mike hallam

Mike, how long did you serve in the military for? Which theatres?

Clearly something driving the huge chip you seem to be carrying on this, so would you care to share?

As I said earlier as someone who has served and lost comrades, I don't expect the world to stop. It's a free world because of those who sacrificed. Being a free world gives everyone choice. Some choose to show respect very publicly, some choose to show it introspectively. Others may choose not to. But the moment we start to try to force our standards on others those freedoms become eroded and eventually lost.........

Engage brain, engage tolerance, relax.........

:D

Says it all really.

And B-x, I appreciate your personal kindly way of displaying tolerance too.

mike hallam.

[note a real English name, no pseudonym].

You are welcome.