Word: flighted
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...simultaneously descend until he can see lights on the ground, toggle multiple radio frequencies to inform nearby planes and airports that he is flying blind, maintain control of a twitchy aircraft in conditions he is not trained to handle, over terrain he does not know and cannot see. When flight nurses have nightmares, this is the picture on the backs of their eyelids...
Wayne Kirby followed the standards, yet he and three passengers still died. Many aviation-safety experts believe such crashes do follow a pattern, one that looks a lot like Kirby's last flight: pilots launch in flyable conditions, only to be confronted midflight by unexpected foul weather, darkness and terrain that they are unequipped to handle. "The FAA says they need to study the situation some more," says Vernon Albert, one of the industry's top safety experts. "That's garbage. They need to get off their butts." (See a story about surviving disasters...
When was the last time you shuffled off a commercial airliner and saw just one pilot in the cockpit? Probably never. Federal rules require two pilots for every airline flight, and all airliners must be equipped with GPS, weather-tracking and collision-avoidance systems. Airliners fly predetermined routes, usually on autopilot, and always land at airports. When the weather turns cloudy or the night turns dark, airline pilots have the training and equipment to fly using just their instruments. "You wouldn't get onto an airliner that can't fly through clouds," says Drew Ferguson, lead pilot for Metro Life...
...Cleveland, Garcia monitors the instrument panel to make sure the helicopter's engines don't overload. Next Garcia uses the radio to warn two local airport towers, two hospitals and all the planes in the area that his bright yellow helicopter is about to traipse directly across their dedicated flight paths...
...Even flying with two pilots, workload can be an issue," Pietro says before the flight. "If you're flying single-pilot in bad weather and you're trying to land on a highway, it gets real scary. There's just not enough hands to do all the work...