Original Message

A lot of you pin-d*cks bristle at taking advice from a 1500-hour pilot. I submit that most of you skygods would not accept advice from Chuck Yeager himself. And why would you? With *very* few exceptions, one of the endearing qualities of nearly every helicopter pilot I've ever met is that they think they know everything already and don't need no stinkin' advice from anybody!  "I've already got enough experience, thank you, and I don't nee YOU to tell me how to do this sh*t."  And yet despite our hubris, we keep crashing helicopters and dying.

I was thinking that the 407 pilot might have had a better chance if he'd been slower.  But looking at Google Earth images of where that powerline crosses I-10, those wires probably would have been darn near invisible until he was right on them.  Hey, every one of us who's got *any* kind of experience has been in that pilot's shoes.  Let's not be too hard on him.