My Cross-Country Adventure

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02 Dec 06: From A Distance

SAN-LAS LAS-ISP

I've made it to Islip, Long Island, New York. The easy way... I got on board Southwest flight 1470 this morning. After a brief stop in Las Vegas, it was non-stop to Islip. We picked up a 130 knot tailwind, clocking a groundspeed in excess of 580 kts (that's 660 mph!). We arrived 25 minutes early, after which I spent 30 minutes waiting for the hotel shuttle to take me the mile or so to the Holiday Inn. I hadn't checked the map that closely before I left, but had I known it was that close, I would have just walked.

In any case, it beats what happened to SWA1470 yesterday - it wound up diverting to Baltimore due presumably to weather.

I think reality is slowing starting to sink in. Now that I'm here, I'll have to get home somehow. If all goes well, that means instead of having someone fly me home in 8 hours (including stops) in a Boeing 737, I'll fly me home in about 18 hours (not including stops) in my Tiger. This should take 3 or 4 days, assuming weather doesn't get in the way.

To be sure, it's not a done deal yet, and I could yet find myself taking a Southwest flight home. (That would probably make this blog even more boring than it probably is so far.) Other than the photos in the ad, I haven't even seen the aircraft yet. That happens tomorrow. Then, on Monday, the current owner and I will fly it to a mechanic in Plymouth, MA, for what's referred to as a pre-purchase inspection. At the moment, I wouldn't know a bearing from a bushing on the plane, so I'll be relying on him to give the plane a good once over and report on any potential issues. It's a 28 year old airplane, so some issues are inevitable. Most are easily fixed (for a price), but primarily, the goal is to make sure there aren't any big problems - no internal corrosion, no control cables about to snap, no wings about to fall off, stuff like that.

You think I'm kidding. While researching all the things I should be doing as a prospective plane buyer, I came across this article. Ok, so the wings didn't actually fall off that plane, but you get the idea. I've read a lot of stories like that - enough to really make me fear there's something that will be overlooked until too late and that I'll have to live down an expensive lesson. On the other hand, the rational part of me says it's just a reporting bias. I'll never read about all the aircraft transactions that went flawlessly, because they're just not all that interesting.

Incidentally, this is the same reporting bias that makes people think small planes are somehow unsafe. The thing is, if a plane crashes anywhere in the US, you'll probably hear about it. I can't remember the last time I heard about a fatal car crash in the national news. I decided to hunt down some hard statistics. Here's what I found:

Assuming the typical general aviation aircraft flies at 100 mph, the number of fatalities per 100 million miles flown is 22. The number of fatalities per 100 million miles on a motorcycle? 38. At least in recent years, for a given distance traveled, you're about twice as likely to die if you do it by motorcycle. If you want, you can check my math and my sources:
2005 Aviation statistics
2003 Motorcycle accident statistics

Where I think this gets especially silly is with life insurance policies. Cory Lidle's accident (you did hear about that, right?) serves as a good example, especially now that I'm about 50 miles from where it happened. His life insurance doesn't pay if he was the one flying at the time of the accident. If it can be proven that his instructor killed him, then the insurance pays. I've seen insurance policies that specifically exclude deaths due to non-commercial aircraft accidents right next to suicide... yet riding a motorcycle or even skydiving (which is something I'll still swear I'll never do) is not excluded.

Wow, I really got sidetracked, didn't I? I suppose I'm just passing time until I get to finally see that which I'm buying. While it may seem unusual that I've signed a purchase contract for an aircraft sight-unseen, it apparently is fairly typical. As a first time buyer, I may have been better off looking for a Tiger close to home. I also could have made arrangements for the pre-purchase inspection before I came out here - so that I'd come knowing everything was good to go. Somehow, that just seemed too abstract to me. For better or worse, I'll be physically present for the inspection, and essentially make the decision of how I'm getting home on the spot, based on the results.

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