Comments on: Dollars To Mackerel¹

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:33:47 +0000

After you get out of the coastal zone, there isn’t much traffic on the Gulf, so directly South of where the aircraft hit would be a good location. The door was indeed a problem, because the chase aircraft saw it immediately.

He should have paid more attention to details if he really wanted to disappear.

By: Marktmoran

Marktmoran — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 06:45:11 +0000

He should have taken an airlplane that would not look like it was bailed out of. A Malibu has an “air stair,” when that type of door is open, there is no way to miss it.

Had the guy rented a Skyhawk or Skylane, he might have been able to squeeze out the door and not had such an obvious problem.

I agree, get out near the edge of the ocean, dive out and let the bird keep heading south……then it would be free to come down provided it did not hit a watercraft.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 06:15:56 +0000

The thing is, he should have gotten the fake ID, and filled the aircraft with enough fuel to reach the Gulf, as the plane came down about thirty miles North of the water. Then he stays off the radio, because the chase aircraft were launched in response to the radio communications. If the plane went into the Gulf it would have taken a while to find it, and without the testimony from the chase aircraft it would have been assumed that he was in it.

He just didn’t think it out, but he’ll have a lot of time to consider his mistakes.

By: Jack K., the Grumpy Forester

Jack K., the Grumpy Forester — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:54:44 +0000

...I just read this story for the first time tonight, and I have to confess that I told Mrs. Jack K. that this was a guy with a certain amount of style, even if his actual planning and execution went a long way toward explaining why he was having so many other problems to begin with. Most people would leave a wallet and a suicide note next to some bridge railing, but this guy decided to fly to altitude and then bail out of what was apparently a perfectly good low-wing Piper Malibu... All of the rest of the story suggests that, flying ability aside, he would best serve society by being permanently out of the gene pool. Still, I can't help but grant the guy a couple of style points for trying (in a DB Cooper sort of manner), even though he deserves a few extra decades of confinement for creating an uncontrolled projectile by bailing out of that perfectly good aircraft. Smoke jumpers are allowed to do that; nobody else has the right to do so... Jack K., the Grumpy Forester´s last blog post..If You Click "Reply All", The Terrorists Win

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:04:39 +0000

You would have thought he would have taken the time to get a reasonably good, fake driver’s license. Getting ID’d by a small town Alabama cop within a day, is not exactly a hopeful sign for life as a fugitive.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 04:37:26 +0000

Just another small-time version of Bernie Madoff. Actually, reminds me a bit of the car salesman in the movie Fargo, Jerry Lundegard. Same stupidity, same idiotic scheming to get out of what he did. In a nation whose entire economy is based on ponzi schemes, this is just a stupider-than-usual one. Sigh. - Badtux the Ponzi Penguin Badtux´s last blog post..The communications revolution