Airline Settlements Email Scam

Don’t be fooled!

I just got an email message supposedly from “Airline Settlements” that says I’m a member of a class action suit against a whole bunch of airlines. This looks pretty official but it’s yet another scam. The class is huge so just about anyone who gets this email might think they really are a member.

Email Scam
Here’s the start of the message. Looks pretty legit, no?

But don’t click the link. It’ll likely either install malware on your computer or device or con you into providing personal information you’d be better off keeping private.

Point to the link
Point to the link to see where it really links to. Don’t click it!

Helicopter Minimum Altitudes

I’m working on a much longer blog post, with photos, about my recently completed autumn vacation, but I thought I’d put this shorter post out because it’s quick and on my mind.

It started with someone on Twitter sharing a video from inside the cockpit of a helicopter flying low and fast over a forest road. There were no cars on the road and no poles or wires. It was an exciting little flight that reminded me of the kind of canyon flying I used to do in some very familiar, remote areas of Arizona. See for yourself.

Helicopter video screenshot.
Here’s a screenshot from the video in question.

What followed was a bunch of comments, including some from a few people too lazy to look up the regulations who claimed that flying like that was illegal. When I pointed out that it was not illegal in the US, a particularly lazy, uninformed idiot quoted my tweet with a portion of the FARs in an attempt to prove me wrong. He didn’t. All he proved is that like so many people these days, he’s only capable of reading until he gets confirmation of what he wants the truth to be. The rest doesn’t matter.

Here’s the entire FAA regulation covering minimum flight altitudes in the US:

§91.119   Minimum safe altitudes: General.

Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes:

(a) Anywhere. An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface.

(b) Over congested areas. Over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any open air assembly of persons, an altitude of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft.

(c) Over other than congested areas. An altitude of 500 feet above the surface, except over open water or sparsely populated areas. In those cases, the aircraft may not be operated closer than 500 feet to any person, vessel, vehicle, or structure.

(d) Helicopters, powered parachutes, and weight-shift-control aircraft. If the operation is conducted without hazard to persons or property on the surface—

(1) A helicopter may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in paragraph (b) or (c) of this section, provided each person operating the helicopter complies with any routes or altitudes specifically prescribed for helicopters by the FAA; and

(2) A powered parachute or weight-shift-control aircraft may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in paragraph (c) of this section.

[Doc. No. 18334, 54 FR 34294, Aug. 18, 1989, as amended by Amdt. 91-311, 75 FR 5223, Feb. 1, 2010]

Did you read paragraph (d) and paragraph (1) right beneath it? I did, but the know-nothing twit pretending to be an expert on Twitter didn’t. It basically says that the paragraphs he quoted (paragraphs (b) and (c) above) don’t apply to helicopters.

I distinctly remember this FAR coming up during my primary training back in the late 1990s. It basically gives helicopter pilots permission to fly at any altitude they need or want to, given that “if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface.”

Take a look at the video. It looks to me as if the pilot is 50-100 feet off the ground. He’s moving at a good clip — at least 60 knots. (I tried to read the airspeed indicator but couldn’t.) With that altitude and airspeed combination, he’s not operating in the shaded area of the height/velocity diagram (or “deadman’s curve“). That means that a safe emergency landing is possible. And with nice smooth pavement beneath him, there’s plenty of suitable space for a landing if it was necessary. So it’s not in violation of paragraph (a) either.

Watch My Helicopter Videos on YouTube

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Flying M Air Logo

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Lots of people don’t get this. They assume the altitude rules apply equally to all aircraft. But they don’t. This makes it pretty clear. Trouble is, there are too many self-important assholes out there — especially on Twitter — who share inaccurate or incomplete information as fact — and too many lazy people willing to believe them without doing their own homework.

If you want to read more about this topic, here’s an old, long, rambling post I wrote about an experience related to this years ago.

Oh, and by the way, this post is about whether the flight is legal in the US. I won’t make any comments about whether it’s safe or whether the pilot is using good judgement. That’s a whole different topic.

A Day of Silence at the Aerie

I just can’t listen to any more of it.

I’m home today, catching up on paperwork, yard work, and home construction chores that I’ve been putting off for too long. When I’m home — unless I’m writing — I almost always have the radio on with NPR (specifically NWPR) tuned in. I get the news from Morning Edition; listen to news analysis and opinions and learn about new books on The Diane Rehm Show; get more of the same from On Point, Here & Now, PRI’s The World, Fresh Air, All Things Considered, and Marketplace; and learn interesting scientific things on Science Friday. If I’m up early enough, I hear BBC World Service, which offers an interesting perspective on current events throughout the world and if I’m still tuned in late in the evening (at home or in my car), I listen to q from CBC. On weekends, if I’m tuned in, I really enjoy Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! and a bunch of other entertaining and/or humorous shows, many of which I also listen to on podcasts so I don’t miss them. (I actually listen to quite a few NPR podcasts, but that’s a whole different blog post.)

NPR, which they say leans left politically, gives me a solid basis of information for me to form my own opinions. Because yes: I am one of the few Americans who can tell the difference between fact and opinion. And I’m among the group of even fewer Americans who actually cares.

But today things are different.

The Orlando shooting happened early yesterday morning, and it’s all over the news today. It’s the same old collection of politician and religious leader “thoughts and prayers,” ultra liberals demanding all guns be banned, ultra conservatives trying to place blame on Muslims, crazy Christians praising the killer for murdering gays, et cetera, ad nauseam. There’s a constant rehashing of what’s known and what’s suspected as the media and public try to figure out whether it should be labeled as terrorism or a hate crime.

As if it really matters.

50 innocent people were killed on Sunday morning and many others seriously injured by a man who apparently had only two guns on him. How does that even happen? How is it that we’re legally allowed to buy guns capable of killing that many people in that short a time?

And who cares whether this was jihad or he was Muslim or white or a citizen or hated to see men kissing. Who fucking cares?

The fact is, he was on an FBI watch list but because our laws don’t prohibit possible terrorists from buying guns, he was able to do so. That’s a fact. There’s no opinion there. He was on a watch list. Period. He was able to legally buy guns that he then used to kill 50 people. Period.

Am I the only person who sees a problem with this?

And the American people are powerless to make the killings stop. Why? Because the NRA buys more politicians than we can ever hope to. And those politicians kill any bill that would limit firearms sales.

Because back in 1791, after fighting a war to get our independence — a war that depended, in great part, on a citizen militia — the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted and it said:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Apparently, many people seem to think these 27 words mean that any American has the right to own any kind of weapon for any reason.

I don’t think automatic assault rifles used to kill 50 people in a bar is what our founding fathers had in mind.

But it doesn’t really matter what I think. I don’t have enough money to buy members of the Congress and Senate. The NRA does. And it gets that money from people who apparently think it’s okay to arm anyone with any weapon they like.

Because Second Amendment.

So the radio is off at the Flying M Aerie today. I simply can’t bear to listen to the news I’m powerless to do anything about.

It didn’t start that way. I listened to about 10 minutes of Morning Edition before I’d had enough and turned it off. I’ve got my aviation radio on instead. I can hear the few planes and helicopters call in as they land or take off from the airport 3 miles from my home.

Otherwise, silence.

Silence for the 50 people who will never speak again.

And the thousands of people killed in senseless gun violence in this country before them.