My post yesterday about the Marine pilot whose F/A-18 crashed into a house caused a small stir. Okay, this isn't the most well-read blog, so it was a very small stir. Basically I was told, "You weren't there, and you don't know what you would do in a similar situation."

And that's true. I don't know.

I was also told, "He didn't intend to hurt anyone."

And that's true. He didn't.

Everything I wrote yesterday is predicated upon one assumption: that the F/A-18 wasn't completely disabled. Flight controls still worked, even if he'd lost power. It's possible that he did NOT have flight controls, at which point there probably wasn't much he could have done, and everything I wrote yesterday was wrong.

Every aircraft I fly uses cables or pushrods to connect the controls to the flying surfaces. Military jets don't work that way. They're "fly by wire". And probably a lot of hydraulics as well. A power failure won't prevent me from guiding where a Cessna is going to land, but it might prevent any ability to control a jet fighter.

So if that's the case -- that he had no further control of the aircraft what-so-ever, then I retract my statements yesterday with an apology to Lt. Neubaurer.

On the other hand -- if he did have control authority of any sort, I stand by everything I said.

We learn during private flight training a few simple rules. Rule #1 during any emergency: Fly the airplane. Don't let the emergency distract you from controlling the aircraft. Many crashes have occurred when people don't follow this rule, so it's rule #1.

In the case of a power outage, rule #2: try to restart, if you have altitude to do so. You skip this rule if you're low to the ground, or you might come back to it after rule 3. It's situational. You'll notice rule #1 is not situational.

Rule #3 (or sometimes rule #2): find a safe place to set the aircraft down.

Rule #3 is not situational. If the airplane is going to come down, you want to bring it down as best you can. Now, when I'm flying around, I don't have the luxury of ejecting. In a war zone, you may not worry about rule #3. Eject and let the plane crash where it crashes.

But he wasn't in a war zone, and civilian policies towards innocent people on the ground must take priority. And if they don't, then the military has bad training priorities.

I don't know what the terrain around the crash site is like. I don't know if there WAS a safe place to put the plane down. Landing on a busy highway is likely to cause deaths for a variety of reasons I don't want to explain right now. (Feel free to ask me.)

But I can tell you this -- if I am in an aircraft that is experiencing problems, then I spend a good share of my time asking myself, "Where am I setting this down if I can't make the airfield?"

Shouldn't a highly trained military pilot be smarter than I am?

If not, why not?

This crash points out a flaw in Marine jet fighter training. Either this pilot didn't learn some pretty darned basic lessons or the Marines aren't teaching some darned basic lessons. In the first case, why was he allowed to pilot such an advanced aircraft in the first place. And if it's the former, well, I shudder to think they're that incompetent.