Flying around the world - Stupidity or Adventure?

[Franco Vazquez]

I think people who try to fly all over the world with small private planes are idiots and most of them are not even professional pilots and the main case of this idiocy is the case of this guy: http://time.com/3030693/haris-babar-suleman-indiana-teen-dies-flying-around-the-world/

 

You must be a really boring and nalla person if you are 17 and trying to do something way beyond your limits. I aint the most daring person but I would still do things like trekking but flying plane is not everyone's cup of tea and incidents like these show how we undermine the efforts of professional pilots and take their job as an easy one.

[coffee_rules]

You know there is a thin-line between Adventure and Stupidity. You survive, you are called an Adventurer, a risk taker. You perish, they call you stupid and reckless. Hindsight is 20/20. 

[beetle]

1 hour ago, coffee_rules said:

You know there is a thin-line between Adventure and Stupidity. You survive, you are called an Adventurer, a risk taker. You perish, they call you stupid and reckless. Hindsight is 20/20. 

Specially at 17 .

 

If you are fit , healthy with necessary experience, then it is fine.

[Muloghonto]

On 10/11/2018 at 5:57 AM, Franco Vazquez said:

I think people who try to fly all over the world with small private planes are idiots and most of them are not even professional pilots and the main case of this idiocy is the case of this guy: http://time.com/3030693/haris-babar-suleman-indiana-teen-dies-flying-around-the-world/

 

You must be a really boring and nalla person if you are 17 and trying to do something way beyond your limits. I aint the most daring person but I would still do things like trekking but flying plane is not everyone's cup of tea and incidents like these show how we undermine the efforts of professional pilots and take their job as an easy one.

i just wanted to point out how incredibly dumb the bolded part is. 

Doing ANYTHING that is at or beyond one's limit is a challenge. Challenge by definition is anything but boring. Calling people who take insane risks as 'boring' is quite literally the most a$$-backwards thing i've read in a long time. 

 

[Muloghonto]

Reading the article, it becomes clear that they were stupid. Not boring or unskilled at doing what they were doing. 

Why were they stupid ?

Because they wanted to do the fastest single-engine circumnavigation of the planet. There is a damn good reason why we havn't done the fastest possible single-engine circumnavigation in the civillian sector. This possibility exists, not because the engines in planes are being continously made so much better, but because single engine planes are recommended NOT to overly more than 400kms from the coast of any nation/island. Ie, don't venture in the middle of the pacific on a single engine aircraft, as a general rule of thumb - if you stall your engine or even require a re-start, you are quite literally effed.

As such, single engine circumnavigation routes deliberately do not take the most direct route possible within the range of the plane around the planet. They take a more conservative route. The father-son duo went down between American Samoa and Hawaii. A stretch in the middle of the pacific that is thousands of kms long of open ocean with less than a dozen tiny islands strewn in between. 
To make matters worse, they left the most dangerous segment (and onward from Hawaii to continental US) for last - when fatigue and logistics are at the lowest point of any trip. Just poor planning and over-ambitious with their risky behaviour.