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[Derek Atkins]

"Anthony J. Gabrielson" <agabriel at coe.neu.edu> writes:

> that. If john was smart he would have held off to till the morning - their
> are often bad flight conditions during the day and at night at the
> vineyard and nantucket, during the day he would at least be in situation
> he knew with light instead of darkness.  John had very few hours and had
> no business making that flight at the time he did, at the very least he
> should have filed a flight plan with the FAA.  

I agree that John was out of his league flying on Friday night.  I
happened to come in on a commercial flight that afternoon, and even below
10000' decending into Logan I couldn't see the ground due to all the
haze.  I've got over 250 flight hours and an Intrument Rating, and I
*still* wouldn't have flown VFR in those conditions, especially at
night.

As for filing a flight plan -- there is no rule that requires a VFR
flight plan.  It is only a recommendation.  While many pilots do
choose to file them, many do not.  I wish people would stop harping on
"they didn't file a flight plan."  That alone has very little bearance
on the capabilities of the pilot.  Honestly, the majority of all GA
flights in the country are flying without flight plans.  Only
commercial and IFR traffic require them, and not many VFR pilots use
the services.

I, personally, don't file flight plans on short VFR flights.  Even
when I fly out to the Vinyard or Nantucket, or up to Vermont or Maine,
I don't file a VFR flight plan.  On the other hand, I _ALWAYS_ use
Visual Flight Following and stay in contact with ATC as much as
possible.  I consider this a better option, as I know there is someone
listening to me if I have a problem.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
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