The ripple effect goes on

Personal responsibility is a concept we’ve all struggled with at some point.

Even those of us who have found a certain level of success in life — people who seem to have it all together — can look back with a modicum of quiet shame at some of the decisions we’ve made.

As teenagers our decision-making skills are often suspect at best. In other words, we all do stupid things. We all have a moment or two filed away in our memories that we wish we’d handled differently.

Running the car out of gas because we were having too much fun or were too cheap to make an intermediate stop to buy an overpriced gallon or two is one thing. We can count ourselves lucky if it’s not raining when we make that walk of shame to the nearest gas station to remedy the situation.

Few of us can claim with any confidence that we’ve never made an unwise purchase, over-estimated our skills at an unfamiliar task, or left the house without first checking we had a set of keys that would get us back through the door we just locked behind us.

Embarrassment is the price we pay for those minor glitches in our thought processes.

To some extent, the situation itself is the punishment. Even if it’s a one-off event, the reminder that hangs in the back of our mind for years to come hopefully prevents us from repeating the error ever again.

Now, if we are so unfortunate as to mix the very human tendency to be momentarily irresponsible with something as unforgiving as aviation, the pain is expanded beyond ourselves. The collateral damage can last for decades.

I bring this up because of a message I received earlier today. A woman wrote to tell me her family had been comforted by the insight offered in an article I wrote years ago.

Three generations of a family have been haunted by the outcome of an accident that happened on Aug. 15, 1966. A lifetime ago. An accident that claimed the life of her father-in-law in a most tragic manner. A man she never met.

It was early on a Monday morning when Richard and John set off on the short flight from Block Island, Rhode Island, to Hartford, Connecticut. The direct route is less than 60 nm. In the C-172 they were flying they might have arrived home in a little more than half an hour. It was a workday. They were both expected to clock in that morning. They had to go — or so they thought.

Richard, a newly minted private pilot, was flying. John, his close friend, was the passenger.

The weather was poor. Low scuddy clouds and rain covered the region. The direct route was determined to be impassable. So, they opted to pick their way along the Connecticut coastline until they got to New Haven. From there they could scud run over the wide ribbon of pavement that makes up Interstate 91. Using that highway as a navigational aid, they would pass within a mile of their destination, Hartford-Brainard Airport.

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened.

Their flight came to an abrupt and tragic end on the rock face of Mt. Higby, just 15 miles short of their destination. They were in cruise flight when the impact occurred, flying at an altitude below the traffic pattern altitude in Hartford.

Get-home-itis is no joke.

Being a VFR pilot with just over 50 hours of flight time, Richard pushed himself ever lower to maintain visual contact with the highway. It could be argued his inexperience left him unaware of the extreme danger of scud-running in an area where the hills, ridgelines, and mountains rise up far higher than the terrain along the coast.

Still, the term Pilot in Command means something.

The investigation concluded Richard was killed in the crash. John, his friend, was still alive when the aircraft was discovered six days later. Dehydrated, deprived of food, and hanging inverted in the woods for nearly a week, he died in the hospital shortly after being rescued.

The woman who wrote me is married to John’s son, who was a little boy not yet 3 years old at the time of the accident.

The family was understandably devastated by the reality of what had befallen their son, their brother, their father. It’s reasonable to assume Richard’s family felt similar pain and loss.

Today, nearly 60 years later, it still impacts John’s family enough that a woman who never knew either of the men in the airplane reached out to express thanks to the man who wrote the story.

That note means the world to me.

I spoke with John’s brother by phone years ago when I was researching the story. The accident haunts me too. I was 7 years old at the time and came across the aircraft shortly after the occupants had been removed.

What sticks with the family is the loss. The painful realization that someone is not coming home again. Not ever. A preventable accident sent their lives in a direction they never envisioned. Even now the emotional ripples remain.

For me, I became a much safer pilot due to the experience of seeing the accident aircraft up close. The memory that sticks with me involves the blood and hair soaked into the headliner with John’s handprints clearly visible in the gore. He struggled mightily, but unsuccessfully, to release himself from the wreckage.

When we climb into the pilot’s seat, we accept responsibility for the decisions we make, the safety of our passengers, and the legacy of our actions. Most often, the flight is a joyous experience. A life-affirming view of the world below and our ability to overcome the forces of nature through the exercise of education, training, and care.

Should we abandon the tenets of safety and throw caution to the wind, we do so not just at our own peril. We also involve the emotional and sometimes physical experience of all who know us, love us, and hope to see us again.

Fly happy. Fly safe. Fly with vigilance. To do otherwise may leave an indelibly negative mark on the world and a great many of the people we care most about.