WASHINGTON – Pleasantly surprised by the feverish, nonstop major-network news coverage of an aircraft accident in Alaska despite the fact that it involved a single-engine float plane manufactured in 1952 with a maximum passenger capacity of only 10, the NTSB today proposed that the FAA require one member of the U.S. Congress to be aboard every general aviation (GA) flight. .

“Normally, in the continental United States, there are about three accidents per month involving general aviation aircraft. In Alaska, there are even more – they average 10 per month up there,” said NTSB spokeswoman Harsher Abdomen.

In both cases, “No one really cares,” she noted. “These are small, private planes, usually with propeller engines. The traveling masses don’t use them and therefore, accidents involving them just don’t hold their attention.”

“When a GA plane goes down in Alaska – in remote, rugged terrain, often with limited visibility, not only do they care even less, they would almost expect it, assuming they were even made aware of it,” she added.

“If they don’t get worked up about a private jet crash at Teterboro (outside of New York City) they sure aren’t going to give a hoot when a prop plane goes down in flyover country or in an even less relevant place like Alaska,” she explained.

So when Monday’s crash of the DeHavilland DHC-3 Otter spawned hysterical, nationwide news coverage and drew hordes of attention-seeking aviation pundits out of the woodwork in the manner one would expect only after a major airline crash, the NTSB made it a point of its investigation to understand why.

After just three days of analysis, the agency thinks it already knows: the presence of former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens. Stevens, one of the most successful pork-barrel politicians in U.S. history, served in the U.S. senate for more than four decades.

With members of Congress installed, the NTSB thinks even crashes of antiquated single-engine aircraft in dismal Alaskan flying conditions could continue to land needed media attention.

“We usually hate to rush to judgment, but after a careful and impartial analysis of the data we’ve recovered from this accident, we’re confident in our early conclusion that the presence of Ted Stevens – and only the presence of Ted Stevens – is what garnered this GA accident the attention it has captured in the national media,” said Abdomen in a statement released by the NTSB.

Seeking to move swiftly on its findings, the NTSB has recommended to the FAA that a member of Congress be required on every G.A. flight within the United States.

“The loss of every aircraft is a tragedy,” read the NTSB statement. “Therefore, each is deserving of full media and regulatory scrutiny.”

Considering the vast number of GA flights per day, the NTSB says that the proposed regulations could be satisfied by using former senators, as Stevens was, as well as “active and former U.S. Representatives, whose lives are also routinely perceived to be of more value than the average citizen’s and therefore more deserving of a full-bore accident investigation when involved in a crash. This recommendation will save lives by diverting rightful attention to every crash, because every crash will have a current or active member of U.S. Congress on board.”

The NTSB noted in an aside that an additional benefit of the proposal would be to “organically induce a de facto term limit among at least a portion of Congress, determined on an impartial and indeed random basis. There are several GA crashes per month. Although not all produce fatalities, the Congressional herd will nonetheless be thinned.”

The NTSB has asked the FAA to respond within 30 days to its recommendation, but it cannot compel the FAA to take action. In the past, the FAA has complained that the NTSB has made suggestions that are not feasible or even possible.

Although the FAA declined to say whether it would ultimately implement the proposal, it did issue a statement agreeing to test the policy using disgraced windbag and current U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel.

Originally posted 2010-08-13 09:58:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter