To date I've seen two airshow crashes, both were planes flown by excellent pilots.
An airshow routine generally never consists of a couple of routine turns, it is a long string of difficult and dangerous maneuvers which all have to be practiced executed close to the ground with a very small margin for error. Add extra planes to the routine, and the danger increases exponentially. From the early barnstorming days, the emphasis has always been on flying that pushes the envelope and has the pilot constantly on the brink of a fiery death, that is what we expect to see when we go to an airshow. Providence smiles on some pilots and they end up dying of natural causes, but with others one day something goes wrong with one of those almost innumerable variables, and they end up flying into something harder than air. Although we don't realize it, essentially the same thing can happen to us on the way to the store one day. One day one of those things we've executed flawlessly 10,000 times before suddenly goes very wrong and we end up crashing our car. Sometimes it isn't even our set of variables that goes catastrophically awry, its another drivers problem that ends up being the end of us.
He was a fine pilot and he didn't die because he was an idiot, he died because he couldn't control providence, he was a good pilot who did his best but like all men he wasn't God and consequently he wasn't in charge of the way all of those little variables fell in line that day. His day came, just as one way or another, whether we are good or bad at what we do, that day will come for all of us no matter how desperately we try to stave it off. The only question therefore is the ultimate question, are you prepared for that day? Are you ready to die?
I don't take too many risks myself, but regardless, I know there is a day appointed for me to come before my maker, and that probably sooner than I think and probably not when I expect it. I'm not afraid of that day though, as I preached recently at the funeral of the wife of an excellent C-130 flight engineer, "I know that this mortal body that I walk around in today, will someday wear out, and that unless Christ returns first someday I will die. Today I am preaching at Margie’s funeral, someday someone, and hopefully a better preacher than me, will be preaching at my funeral. But friends I am not afraid of that day because Jesus has taken the sting out of death for me. Because He has paid for my sins, all that death can do is convey me into his presence, the curse of it is gone forever. So I do not fear it."
Viking, we need to be humble enough to realize that we are not immortal and that none of "execute life flawlessly" and that someday, all of us are going to die no matter what we do. To think that our paying extra close attention to detail twenty four by seven will nullify that fact is sheer hubris. I'm just glad that this man lived a life whose passing is lamented, far too many don't, and I salute him for that. I hope he was ready for that day, but at this point only he and God know that. The mature reaction to events like this is not a shallow condemnation, but a sobering reflection that "where he has gone, I will someday follow."
"Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit"; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that." But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil." (James 4:16-17)
- SEAGOON
