A beach, a jogger, a failing plane, and death
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100316/ap_on_re_us/us_plane_kills_beachgoer



It seems to me there is no reason airplanes with engine failure should be silent, shouldn't a crash whistle be standard equipment?

Your engine stalls, you're crash landing, you pull a lever, and your plane starts making lots of noise.


The jogger in the article was wearing an iPod, but I think he would have heard a whistle.

I think someone that is dealing with an engine out has more important things to do than worry about hitting the whistle button.

Life is risky and sometimes you are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Wow, what are the odds on that happening?

Pilot has time to put landing gear down yes? Why couldn't that turn on a whistle?
Heck, it could even be magnetic, engine has power, the whistle is turned off, power cuts out, magnetic lock fails, whistle is turned on.

Nothing like a high pitched whistle to calm your nerves, eh?

and no, the pilot didn't put the landing gear down either...

would be interesting though to fit all aircraft with a high pitched whistle, especially if you live close to an airport.

Like the Stuka dive bomber in WWII:

"Finally, as if the sight and sound of an enemy bomber diving right at you is not frightening enough, Adolf Hitler ordered to equip the Stuka with a screaming siren that made the sound of its dive far more frightening, giving it a greatly enhanced psychological effect which terrorized enemy civilians and soldiers alike, including some anti-aircraft gunners who could fire at it and did not. "
http://www.2worldwar2.com/stuka.htm

and what if the jogger had been deaf?

Actually it would have been better to equip all small aircraft with a parachute !
http://thefutureofthings.com/pod/184/aircraft-parachute.html

I really think this is the ultimate case of wrong place at the wrong time.

An experimental airplane suffers engine failure, oil is all over the windows, the pilot makes the decision to ditch into the ocean, and in doing so clips and kills a visiting jogger with IPod headphones in.

Just how freaking unlucky was that guy?

When first reported both DW and I looked at each other and said how bizarre can you get. The local news people also expressed total disbelief.

As to the landing gear, you leave the gear up when ditching into water, which was the intent all along of the pilot. Because of the oil on the front windshield, he was trying to pilot while looking out the side windows only.

Probably about the same odds as that woman being stalked and attacked by wolves...

If I got the story right the jogger was listening to his iPod. Takes a pretty big whistle to get thru that.

If this happens again in the next 5 years I'd reconsider the crash whistle idea to suppress the mass destruction of life.


oh, wait. What will you require of gliders now?

or airballoons, or parachutists

The problem is the jogger was running the wrong way. How stupid is that? So pass a law requiring joggers to run in the proper direction....

Sorry, this is a very unfortunate situation, and extremely tragic for the individuals concerned. Legislation, however, is not required.