At two miles out you are less than a minute from landing, so if anything goes wrong there is no time to correct. Without power the plane drops like a rock and there is no way of controlling it. It almost reached the open space, another two hundred feet, but it just didn’t have the altitude.
I have family in Del Mar and San Diego, and I was on Google as soon as I saw it, as well as checking the Union-Tribune.
]]>The developer probably added 3 inches of insulation in the ceiling above normal code for “sound proofing” to show that he was thoughtful of living in a flight path.
A witness said it looked like the pilot was trying for the canyon when he ran out of altitude, and had already clipped trees when he punched out. He must have flamed out during final or he would have ditched it in the ocean, which is why there are so few crashes at Miramar.
There were rumors that they were going to shut down Miramar in a BRAC round, but they transferred it from the Navy to the Marines to provide for air-ground training at Camp Pendleton just up the road a bit.
]]>Look, you gotta have priorities here. What’s more important, dollars, or people’s lives? Hint: We got 9 billion friggin’ people on this planet. So who cares if a few die in the occasional jet fighter crash? Sheesh! Some people!
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
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