Press gets it wrong again

[JJay]

This is an article on a recent crash of a homebuilt at ISP. The two lines that had me laughing out loud:

Unlike commercial flights, small aircraft, such as amateur-built planes, can fly throughout the night.

Two years ago, not far from the crash site, an amateur-built twin-engine plane made a similar landing in a grove of trees.

The "amateur-built twin-engine plane" was a King Air C90.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-liplan1204,0,1255706.story

 

[vschip]

"Unlike commercial flights, small aircraft, such as amateur-built planes, can fly throughout the night. "

Guess that a-hole has never heard of Fedex, UPS, DHL, Airnet...

 

[flywithastick]

This one was pathetic! Sounded like it was written by a 5th grader with an agenda against experimentals. Wrote a letter to the editor... I'm sure it'll make a big difference.

 

[Stifler's Mom]

Favorite Quotes of Article

"As the airport gets larger, these incidents will increase" - Deborah Slinkosky, of Holbrook, president of Citizens for Enforcement of Airport Controls

Must have been a statistics major in college.

Mary Lopreto, 38, whose house was clipped by Hughes' plane. "On windy days, we get a lot of low-flying planes."

Huh? Sure, high winds = low flying aircraft.

In addition, it is a pilot's responsibility to determine the proper altitude of his plane.

You don't say?

 

[sky37d]

I, too, sent a letter to the editor, and this is what I wrote

Your article on the plane crash on Long Island, in the Dec 4, 2003 issue is incredibly inacurate
"Unlike commercial flights, small aircraft, such as amateur-built planes, can fly throughout the night"
It is obvious that Denise Bonilla has never been on a red-eye, or flown to Europe. Most flights to Europe leave late evening, and fly all night. UPS and FedEX get their packages from one city to another by flying them at night. It has nothing to do with the story, which recounts an airplane crashing during the morning.
Further, most airplane accidents involve non-amateur built airplanes, produced by companies like Cessna, Boeing, and Raytheon.
It would be helpful to your readers if Denise got her facts straight, and actually understood what she was writing about.
Between November 24 and December 5, there were 95 reportable incidents involving airplanes, 3 of those involved experimental airplanes, and one of those experimental airplanes was the Goodyear Blimp.
Here is a link to real data, not something dreamed up by Denise
http://www2.faa.gov/avr/aai/iirform.htm
Just thought I would help you out with ACCURATE reporting. Feel free to contact me at any time.
Thanks

Think they will actually read it?

 

[Wankel7]

Yeah, that is nuts. I sent them this email.

Article - "Residents Fear Effects of Amateur-Built Planes"

Date - December 4th 2003

Reporter - Denise Bonilla

Two paragraphs of Denise's article concerned me.

1. Unlike commercial flights, small aircraft, such as amateur-built planes, can fly throughout the night.

2.Two years ago, not far from the crash site, an amateur-built twin-engine plane made a similar landing in a grove of trees.

I am concerned by both paragraphs because of their overwhelming miss-information and complete lack of research.

I will address number one. This is incorrect. There is no regulation that says commercial flights cannot operate during the night hours. As long as the aircraft is properly equipped for night flight and the crew must meet requirements for night flight the flight is allowed. The same also applies for home built aircraft. There is no Federal Aviation Regulation (FAR) that does not allow commercial aircraft to fly in the night hours. As a commercial pilot I can assure you I have seen many sunsets and sunrises in the same workday.

As for the second paragraph of concern. "...An amateur-built twin-engine plane...” This is completely untrue. Please see the link at the end of this correspondence concerning that crash. The aircraft you mentioned in the crash was a C90 Beech King Air. That aircraft is not a home built. Raytheon makes it. You can find information on that airplane at http://www.raytheonaircraft.com/beechcraft/king_air_c90b/king_air_c90b.htm.

I am concerned about the lack of research. This type of misinformation simply scares the public more than informs them. Your readers look at your newspaper for facts. Not a tabloid quality of reporting.

I would strongly advise your newspaper to consult a competent aviation advisor before reporting any addition aviation stories.

NTSB report concerning the second quote - http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20010601X01050&key=1

Wankel

 

[WrightAvia]

As for the second paragraph of concern. "...An amateur-built twin-engine plane...” This is completely untrue. Please see the link at the end of this correspondence concerning that crash. The aircraft you mentioned in the crash was a C90 Beech King Air. That aircraft is not a home built. Raytheon makes it.

Maybe she meant to say that "HOMIES" built the plane, Holmes.

 

[captainv]

Oh, what the heck. It's not like anyone else will defend the media.

Disclaimer: I have a degree in journalism and worked as a copy editor in Florida for 4 years before going into aviation full-time.

>Unlike commercial flights, small aircraft, such as amateur-built >planes, can fly throughout the night.

context. this is a reporter writing about a local airport. the airport is closed from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., so airliners aren't scheduled to land after the tower closes. No red-eyes out of Islip to Europe, that's for sure. Now, why was it brought up at all? Not sure, but the info came from the FAA spokesman. maybe there's a paragraph that an editor took out to make the story fit the space, but the cut makes the story puzzling. (i've never done that, of course.)

also, i don't recall seeing any cargo carriers at that airport.

interesting aside: in journalism school, you're taught to write on an 8th-grade level. if you get any higher than that, lots of readers won't understand what you're talking about, especially on a local level.

i'm afraid i don't see an agenda against homebuilts. she notes a "lengthy ground inspection" before the FAA lets them fly. of course the local citizens' group thinks they're a danger. they hate anything that flies. but did you read to the end?

>>According to Experimental Aviation Association, the number of FAA registered amateur-built planes rose from 17,000 to more than 21,000 from 1990 to 2000. The number of accidents also increased, from 158 to 241.

>>Still, Charlie Becker, the association's director of aviation information services, said the increase is not related to the home-building of the planes.

>>"Most accidents still come down to pilot error," Becker said.

even the association's mouthpice says homebuilts aren't to blame. sounds good to me.

now, as for something like this:

Mary Lopreto, 38, whose house was clipped by Hughes' plane. "On windy days, we get a lot of low-flying planes."

well, you'll never get any shortage of idiotic quotes from average joes.

so, will the letters to the editor change anything? probably not, if they're written with such a demeaning attitude. but at least you wrote in.

 

[Wankel7]

Gheto fab.......fabrication?

 

[TonyC]

>Unlike commercial flights, small aircraft, such as amateur-built >planes, can fly throughout the night.

context. this is a reporter writing about a local airport. the airport is closed from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., so airliners aren't scheduled to land after the tower closes.

Perhaps this particular airport enjoys no commercial traffic when the tower is closed, but I can assure you that a tower closure does NOT by definition prohibit the landing of commercial aircraft. Witness FedEx 727's making early morning (pre-tower opening) landings every day. I don't think the 727 that landed short of the runway in TLH could be classified as a non-commercial, small aircraft.

Not sure, but the info came from the FAA spokesman.

Not that line... no FAA spokesman would say, or even imply, that commercial flights don't operate at night.

i'm afraid i don't see an agenda against homebuilts.

She opens the article:
"They are model airplanes ..."

Gimme a break... NO, they're REAL airplanes, with real engines, and REAL wings, and REAL pilots...

She continues:
"Pieced together in dusty garages ..."

No bias there, huh?

so, will the letters to the editor change anything? probably not, ...

Perhaps you're right on that point. But if the periodical is intellectually honest enough to publish the letters for readers to see another side of the story, perhaps they can pretend to be less ignorant than the 8th-grade target audience.

 

[captainv]

TonyC,

>>Perhaps this particular airport enjoys no commercial traffic when the tower is closed, but I can assure you that a tower closure does NOT by definition prohibit the landing of commercial aircraft.

sorry, i wasn't clear enough. i was saying that maybe no commercial traffic is scheduled to land at ISP after tower closes. of course they COULD still land there, but the reporter wouldn't necessarily know that. all my comments are directed toward ISP only, as i'm confident that's how the reporter was approaching it.

actually, maybe she misinterpreted the FAA's comment about the tower closure for the commercial planes can't fly at night thing. hard to know, but hopefully she knows it's wrong now...

have you ever talked to an average joe about aviation? take 5 people at random from the grocery story and tell them what happened in this crash. then have them explain it to someone else. think anything gets lost in translation? we did this in CRM class with a bunch of highly intelligent pilots. you should have heard some of the clearances we came up with!

>She opens the article:
"They are model airplanes ..."

>Gimme a break... NO, they're REAL airplanes, with real engines, and REAL wings, and REAL pilots...

it comes in a kit. or you can buy plans and build it yourself. (at least this is how it was explained to her) to an average person, that sounds a lot like a model airplane. how professional do you think "homebuilt" sounds to the average joe? i keep bringing up the average joe because that's who's reading the paper.

my old chief pilot had a Shelby Cobra replica he loved to drive.

He called it a kit car, depite the fact that it's a real car, with a real engine, real wheels and a real driver.

to most people, a "real" car is one that came out of a factory. why should we expect their perception of airplanes be different?

>She continues:
"Pieced together in dusty garages ..."

>No bias there, huh?

"They are model airplanes with working engines, welding and grease instead of toothpicks and glue. Pieced together in dusty garages by ambitious hands and watched over with starry eyes, amateur-built planes, such as the one that crashed into a Holbrook yard Tuesday, are increasingly dotting the skies."

taken as a whole, i think the lead paragraph is pretty good. what about "ambitious hands" and "starry eyes"? hardly the terms you'd use to imply unsafe flying death traps, is it? and as far as dusty garages, how is that a slam?

>so, will the letters to the editor change anything? probably not, ...

>Perhaps you're right on that point. But if the periodical is intellectually honest enough to publish the letters for readers to see another side of the story, perhaps they can pretend to be less ignorant than the 8th-grade target audience.

any newspaper isn't exactly thrilled about running corrections. we'd generally only correct significant fact errors - i.e. misidentified people, bad headlines, etc. while she made mistakes in this story, i don't see anything that would draw a correction. reporters aren't experts on aviation, so it's not exactly a surprise when they make some mistakes. also, you think they're going to run sky37d's letter? not a chance. wankel7's they'd probably send to the reporter, but you won't see it on the editorial page. as for the King Air, where's she get the info? did somebody tell her it was a homebuilt? do you actually think she's going to check the NTSB website for verification on this when it's such an incidental piece of info? do you have any idea the kind of schedule these people work under??

now, if a King Air had crashed yesterday and she called it a homebuilt in her article - that's a correction.

bottom line, aviation isn't easy to write about. mistakes will happen and they'll never have the knowledge that we have. that said, they do know tons about police procedures, taxes, government, and a billion other things that you barely know about because they cover it everyday. they don't know a lot about planes because they don't crash very often. when they do, they get a few letters from pissed off pilots who belittle them. would that motivate you to care if you were her?

 

[flywithastick]

i'm afraid i don't see an agenda against homebuilts. she notes a "lengthy ground inspection" before the FAA lets them fly. of course the local citizens' group thinks they're a danger. they hate anything that flies. but did you read to the end?

Try rereading the entire first paragraph. In addition to it not making sense (hence my comment about it written on a 5th grade level) it was wrong. It seriously mischaracterizes the avg amateur built planes and builders. And I believe it was mischaracterized to paint a less than complimentary picture of the group. Agenda against homebuilders via stirring up the ignorant masses with their sensationalistic media hype.

Why can't the d@mn media just report the news without subjective qualifiers, errors and slant as they claim to do?! This goes for everything from reporting on the president, economy, guns, SUV's, to anything they feel that they have to influence. Hypocrites.

PS - you wanna know why pilots (and builders/owners of experimentals) are so short tempered with the media?! It's because they take advantage of the group in a negative light 99% of the time in order to further their sales and careers. Yep - I'm defensive. They made me that way. Why do people tend to think less of home-built planes? Do the safety numbers warrant this reputation? NO! It's because, in part, that the media hypes and distorts the stories, as opposed to just reporting them in a the neutral manner they claim to.

 

[rettofly]

interesting aside: in journalism school, you're taught to write on an 8th-grade level. if you get any higher than that, lots of readers won't understand what you're talking about, especially on a local level.

Do journalism majors have to be able to read / write at the 8th grade level? Judging from some of the drivel I've seen in recent periodicals, I wonder.

 

[uscpilot]

Do journalism majors have to be able to read / write at the 8th grade level? Judging from some of the drivel I've seen in recent periodicals, I wonder.

Wouldnt it be cheaper just to hire 8th graders to write the stories, since that is their target level of intelligence? Go to the source.
To avoid contraversey (sp) they could churn these stories out of 8th grade english classes. At 20 - 30 kids a class they could just choose the best stories. Alot of the profits could be put back into our ailing schools.
Why stop at writing, how about engineering? I remember all the wacked out pictures of cars, and planes that I drew back when I was in middleschool? Could you imagine how cool cars would look if we let kids design them?
The potential is endless....
usc

 

[flywithastick]

Why stop at writing, how about engineering? I remember all the wacked out pictures of cars, and planes that I drew back when I was in middleschool? Could you imagine how cool cars would look if we let kids design them?
The potential is endless....
usc

good idea! I think Honda has already beat you to the punch, though...

http://images.automotive.com/stock/300/HONDA/ELEMENT/2003/5OD.jpg

 

[TonyC]

have you ever talked to an average joe about aviation?

Is the reporter an average Joe, or is she a journalist? I thought journalists were supposed to be better than us - - you know, unbiased <cough> reporters of fact, or at least have the appearance of such. Doesn't she have a responsibility to strive for accuracy?

>She opens the article:
"They are model airplanes ..."

>Gimme a break... NO, they're REAL airplanes, with real engines, and REAL wings, and REAL pilots...

it comes in a kit. or you can buy plans and build it yourself.

I've heard of home brewery kits - - do you call it model beer? Even eighth graders know how to use dictionaries.

MODEL: a usually miniature representation of something;

my old chief pilot had a Shelby Cobra replica he loved to drive.

He called it a kit car, depite the fact that it's a real car, with a real engine, real wheels and a real driver.

Did he call it a model car?

>She continues:
"Pieced together in dusty garages ..."

>No bias there, huh?

"They are model airplanes with working engines, welding and grease instead of toothpicks and glue. Pieced together in dusty garages by ambitious hands and watched over with starry eyes, amateur-built planes, such as the one that crashed into a Holbrook yard Tuesday, are increasingly dotting the skies."

taken as a whole, i think the lead paragraph is pretty good. what about "ambitious hands" and "starry eyes"? hardly the terms you'd use to imply unsafe flying death traps, is it? and as far as dusty garages, how is that a slam?

Taken as a whole, I think the lead paragraph is intended to evoke images of junkyard wars. "[T]oothpicks and glue" didn't just wander aimlessly into that image all by themselves - - they were placed there to intentionally paint the picture the author saw. "Welding and grease" and "dusty garage" draw a stark contrast from a modern, clean, professional factory where the "real" airplanes are built. "[A]mbitious hands" and "starry eyes" would not be used to describe the factory professionals that assemble "real" airplanes. Come on, you can't really be serious in thinking she wasn't trying to paint a picture with words, can you?

any newspaper isn't exactly thrilled about running corrections. we'd generally only correct significant fact errors - i.e. misidentified people, bad headlines, etc. while she made mistakes in this story, i don't see anything that would draw a correction. reporters aren't experts on aviation, so it's not exactly a surprise when they make some mistakes. also, you think they're going to run sky37d's letter? not a chance. wankel7's they'd probably send to the reporter, but you won't see it on the editorial page.

Like I said, IF they're intellectually honest. If they're more interested in looking good, there's no point in correcting minor mistakes, or even major ones that folks won't complain about. They certainly wouldn't be helping circulation by publishing a letter to the editor on the editorial page. All that stuff is supposed to be flowery adulations.

as for the King Air, where's she get the info? did somebody tell her it was a homebuilt? do you actually think she's going to check the NTSB website for verification on this when it's such an incidental piece of info? do you have any idea the kind of schedule these people work under??

Where'd she get the info? Well, all I know for sure is that she'll protect her source to the death - - journalists are good at that sort of thing. For crying aout loud, why does it matter where she got the info? It's wrong. Sure, she probably doesn't have time to use the dial-up modem at her newspaper's office. She probably can't spell the website for NTSB correctly, anyway. And besides, if the King Air's not a model airplane pieced together by ambitious hands and starry eyes with a welding torch and grease in a dusty garage, that would alter her statistics on Experimental Aircraft crashes over the past two years by 50%, AND it would shorten her paragraph by a sentence. She might have to fabricate ANOTHER fact! (Perhaps she could have used another sentence to explain that while ISP has no scheduled commercial traffic after the tower closes at night, airplanes still can land on the runway. In addition to numerous factory-built general aviation and corporate aircraft, an occasional experimental aircraft slips in, too. Or, maybe she could have gotten creative and provided a link to the archived story of the King Air crash 2 years ago. Oops, somebody might have picked up on that error if they'd seen a picture - - never mind that idea.)

that said, they do know tons about police procedures, taxes, government, and a billion other things that you barely know about because they cover it everyday.

Wow. I never knew they were so incredibly gifted. To know all that, AND be able to communicate on an 8th grade level. I think this woman should run for President. But if she doesn't, at least I can be confident that the REST of her stories are 100% accurate and totally UNbiased. It's a relief knowing that.

would that motivate you to care if you were her?

The same thing that has kept me typing for the past 10 minutes - - a passion for truth and accuracy. Do they teach that in Journalism school?

 

[JJay]

Just wanted to update all of you.

The newspaper (Newsday) printed a correction about this article on page 2 in today's edition.

"An aircraft that crashed in Holbrook two years ago was a Beech C90, manufactured by Raytheon Aircraft Company. A story yesterday on home-built airplanes mistakenly identified it as amateur-built. In addition, pilots are required to register amateur-built planes with the FAA".


CaptainV - I have to agree with Tony C on this one. There really is no excuse for sloppy, inaccurate reporting. The information on the King Air crash was readily available to this reporter because this same paper ran a few stories about that crash two years ago.

 

[TonyC]

Just wanted to update all of you.

The newspaper (Newsday) printed a correction about this article on page 2 in today's edition.

"An aircraft that crashed in Holbrook two years ago was a Beech C90, manufactured by Raytheon Aircraft Company. A story yesterday on home-built airplanes mistakenly identified it as amateur-built. In addition, pilots are required to register amateur-built planes with the FAA".

The correction didn't quite make it to the Online News Corrections Page.

: sigh :

 

[TonyC]

What would motivate a journalist to publish the same article, with the correction noted, under a different title???

Plane And Not So Simple


Ya think sky37d and Wankel7 were heard? hmmmmm

 

[JJay]

Here it is Tony-

http://www.newsday.com/news/correct...c05,0,4778391.story?coll=ny-corrections-print