Pa 1000 F Schedule 2015: Fill & Download for Free

Skipping to the end:Yes. The tax money that we all are required to pay to the Federal Government should be spent on programs whereby a bunch of educated intellectuals try to tell everyone else what they ought to think and how they ought to think. I say it this way specifically since I wish to address common criticisms on their own terms in this answer and not speak past them.The general concept of "public broadcasting" and the rationale supporting it is a very good one.On the children's education front, I have first-hand insight into the level of scrutiny that PBS-distributed children's programs are subjected to in terms of proving that they are effective at achieving pedagogical goals and in demonstrating positive impact. The bar is far higher than anything I've encountered in the private sector. They set the standard.There are certain "inefficiencies" (to put it mildly and politely) in the broadcast paradigm. That's true in for-profit television as well, but when cash is coming from government grants, foundation grants, and donations from "viewers like you," certain excesses are much less palatable. Although it will take awhile longer before anything matches the reach of broadcast television & radio, technological progress is leading us to better and more cost-efficient models of content distrubtion.I love many of the programs that are distributed by PBS (public TV) and Public Radio – and there are several where I get tears in my eyes. I've had to work really hard to keep this answer clean and not resort to appeal to emotion in lieu of making an argument. My "top ten" list is at the end.Now let's start at the beginning:I offered an answer to Obama-Romney Presidential Debates (October 2012): Is cutting federal funding to PBS an important spending cut? I addressed the question at a general level of American History and Politics of the United States of America – there are people who are still furious about the Barry Goldwater loss to Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and despite the fact that CPB funding is a drop in the ocean when it comes to the Federal Budget, the fact that it's a highly visible Great Society initiative makes an attractive target. I didn't, however, say much about what I personally think. Then Rahul Shankar had to go and call me out. So here we are.In the context of the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election, I'm not at all beyond using pictures of sad-looking Sesame Street (creative franchise) characters to engage in blatant appeals to emotion to rhetorically club Mitt Romney (politician). Such things are completely within bounds of the "Pirate Code" for political discussion.http://www.quora.com/soapbox/319777http://www.quora.com/soapbox/A-Summary-of-the-Debate-for-Emily-Smith-Who-Didnt-WatchThat, however, is not what we're here to talk about. This is a policy conversation that needs to be had independent of that.We need to define a few things:Public Broadcasting: Television, radio, and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. It's a general concept.The Corporation for Public Broadcasting: A private corporation in the United States that is Congressionally chartered to distribute Federally budgeted funds to further public broadcasting. The CPB does not own stations and does not produce programs.PBS (public TV) - The Public Broadcasting Service: A non-profit American public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership over the network. PBS is a network that distributes content to its affiliates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBSNPR (public radio) (National Public Radio), APM (American Public Media) and PRI (Public Radio International): Three networks of public radio stations that all produce and distribute public radio content to those stations. NPR is the largest network with 900 members, but prominent programs are distributed by the others. For example, This American Life is distributed by PRI and A Prairie Home Companion (radio) is distributed by APM.Affiliate: A local member of one of the networks that serves a specific market.Producer: Whoever it is that makes the content that gets distributed by the networks and broadcast by the affiliates. Sometimes the producer is one of the affiliate stations, sometimes it is the network, and sometimes it is an independent company – like Sesame Workshop (formerly known as the Children's Television Workshop), which is the producer of Sesame Street (creative franchise).We also need to address the elephant in the room...or whatever it is that Mr. Snuffleupagus is. THE PRODUCTION OF SESAME STREET IS SELF-SUPPORTING AND HAS BEEN SINCE 1978. The Federal Government DOES NOT pay for the production of Sesame Street. Big Bird is a red herring – except that he is yellow and not a fish. If you want to get technical, a small amount does flow from CPB via PBS to Sesame Workshop to cover content acquisition, but it is very little.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Street#Fundinghttp://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/04/sesame-workshop-big-bird-lives-on-we-receive-very-little-funding-from-pbs/http://www.forbes.com/sites/larissafaw/2012/10/04/romney-may-like-big-bird-too-bad-he-doesnt-know-sesame-doesnt-receive-pbs-funding/As a matter of fact, Sesame Street started airing in 1969. PBS did not start broadcasting until 1970. Sesame Street came first. Not every show is Sesame Street, though, and not every Producer is Sesame Workshop.(Amended 3/16/2017: In 2015, Sesame Workshop made a deal with HBO to have HBO fund all of its production and then provide to PBS at no charge after a nine month exclusivity window. See Sesame Street’ to Air First on HBO for Next 5 Seasons)Back to the core matter at hand: you want to know why public broadcasting should be funded by the Federal Government? Here's how the 90th Congress of the United States of America explained it:http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title47/html/USCODE-2011-title47-chap5-subchapIII-partIV-subpartd-sec396.htm47 U.S.C. §396. Corporation for Public BroadcastingThe Congress hereby finds and declares thatit is in the public interest to encourage the growth and development of public radio and television broadcasting, including the use of such media for instructional, educational, and cultural purposes;it is in the public interest to encourage the growth and development of nonbroadcast telecommunications technologies for the delivery of public telecommunications services;expansion and development of public telecommunications and of diversity of its programming depend on freedom, imagination, and initiative on both local and national levels;the encouragement and support of public telecommunications, while matters of importance for private and local development, are also of appropriate and important concern to the Federal Government;it furthers the general welfare to encourage public telecommunications services which will be responsive to the interests of people both in particular localities and throughout the United States, which will constitute an expression of diversity and excellence, and which will constitute a source of alternative telecommunications services for all the citizens of the Nation;it is in the public interest to encourage the development of programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities;it is necessary and appropriate for the Federal Government to complement, assist, and support a national policy that will most effectively make public telecommunications services available to all citizens of the United States;public television and radio stations and public telecommunications services constitute valuable local community resources for utilizing electronic media to address national concerns and solve local problems through community programs and outreach programs;it is in the public interest for the Federal Government to ensure that all citizens of the United States have access to public telecommunications services through all appropriate available telecommunications distribution technologies; anda private corporation should be created to facilitate the development of public telecommunications and to afford maximum protection from extraneous interference and control.Our common interest – as manifested by 47 U.S.C. §396 – isn't about television or broadcasting. It's about education, and making educational and cultural materials accessible. Easy access to education, information, and instruction is both an imperative for employment & GDP growth and makes for a better society. Both capitalistic free markets and democratic governance break when people are ignorant and uninformed. Education is a matter of national importance and critical infrastructure that supports the economy. The American Dream is a hollow vision when U.S. Citizens aren't equipped to compete.(Frankly, if you spend any time at all on Quora and I have to convince you that you personally benefit from other people being educated, then what are you doing here?)People often raise issues on of the amount that government in the U.S. spends on Education proportional to other things. I have issues with the proportion we spend too:http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2012_US_totalA total of 15% of Government spending – when you factor in all levels – is directed to education. That's more then we spend on defense and second only to what we spend on health care. (Go ahead and read that again – especially my very good friends who lean left. We do invest more into education than we do on bombs.)We spend a total of $910.2 billion annually on Education and we're getting inadequate results out of just about everything...except Public Broadcasting. I have first-hand insight into the level of scrutiny and rigor that PBS' educational programming put through and that $445 million is an amazing deal when so much else isn't working. We're getting tremendous of reach and a lot of educational bang for the buck out of the five hundreths of a percent of all of the Education spending we do.Education is a topic I'm very passionate about and I could go on and on here. I've got another post I'm planning to write at some point, but the point I want to reinforce before I digress too far is that – despite rumors to the contrary – we throw a lot of money at this problem, and public broadcasting actually delivers. My argument is NOT that it's only whatever tiny percent of the Federal budget; my argument is that it's a tiny percent of what we collectively spend on Education and we get great value compared to the rest of what we're doing.I'll have a lot more to say on the general issue of education policy in the future, but now back to our regularly scheduled programming.The next piece we need to talk about is access.As I said before, Sesame Street will be fine – but that doesn't matter if people are unable to get to Sesame Street.Some people point to educational Cable channels (like those run by Discovery Inc. (Mass media company)) and to an emerging array of options on the Internet.Regarding cable:http://www.mediacenteronline.com/attatch/Cable10.indd.pdfRegarding the Internet:http://www.census.gov/hhes/computer/publications/2010.htmlUnlike either cable or Internet, Broadcast television has near universal penetration into American households. Over the course of a year, according to Nielsen (company), 91% of all U.S. television households - and 236 million people - watch PBS. The demographic breakdown of PBS' full-day audience reflects the overall U.S. population with respect to race/ethnicity, education and income. http://www.pbs.org/about/background/Via the PBS and Public Radio networks of broadcasters, that investment in educational (and informational and cultural) programming actually gets out there and makes it available.We need to address the perfectly valid questions about private foundations and individual donors filling the void.There's a bit of history that has mostly gotten overlooked in this debate over the years: the private sector actually created non-commercial public broadcasting when the Ford Foundation created the Educational Television and Radio Center (ETRC) in November 1952. That became the National Educational Television and Radio Center in 1958, and simply National Educational Television in 1963. In 1966, Ford Foundation began to withdraw its support. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Educational_Television.As that began to happen, the Carnegie Corporation of New York sponsored a 15 member panel to investigate the future of educational television. That panel – which included corporate leaders – recommended legislative action. http://www.current.org/wp-content/themes/current/archive-site/pbpb/carnegie/CarnegieISummary.html , http://cspcs.sanford.duke.edu/sites/default/files/descriptive/public_broadcasting.pdfPrivate foundations - e.g., Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Gates Foundation, Doris Duke, Melville Charitable Trust, and countless others – are often willing to offer varying degrees of support year over year, but being relied upon as a bedrock restricts them from undertaking other activities. It's not their cup of tea.(Besides, I can hear the conspiratorial complaints now about how a handfuls of private foundations are trying to influence our youth without any transparency or public accountability. We'll wind up having Congressional hearings over it all anyway.)As for individuals.... <sigh>We now head straight towards the heart of one of the core philosophical debates about American governance.236 million people watch PBS in a given year. The CPB appropriation for FY 2013 is $445 million. If that money were cut, every one of those people would have to contribute $1.88 annually to make up the shortfall.WAIT – WHAT??? THAT'S IT???That's correct. One dollar and eighty eight cents per person. Per year. (On top of what regular donors are already giving) If every viewer donated the amount of spare change that they might find lying in the street to their local PBS and Public Radio affiliate, the Federal funding issue goes away.There are two things though:They (we) do this.They (we) don't do this.91% of the 97.5% of U.S. households with television – or 88.75% of American households – watch PBS. And those households pay taxes to the Federal Government. (Go right ahead; I dare you to say "47%" to me.) The government takes a portion of those taxes and appropriates it to the CPB. The 12.5% of households that never ever watch PBS may be a bit irked by that. However, $10.8 billion has been put towards the Corporation for Public Broadcasting over the 43 years since 1969 and that has bought a lot of kids learning ABCs & 123s, a lot of people getting inspired about the Universe through shows like Cosmos & NOVA, a lot of people learning about America through Ken Burns (documentary filmmaker) specials, a lot of people appreciating fine cooking though Julia Child (TV personality), and lots and lots of happy little Bob Ross (artist) clouds. Let me know when the F-35 Lightning II – estimated lifetime cost = $1000 billion (otherwise known as $1 trillion) – finally goes into production and then we'll talk about how the Federal budget process works. That's a program we've been pouring money into and haven't seen anything out of it.Flipping to the next point: do you think all those pledge drives would be necessary if everyone who watched or listened was willing to chip in two bucks? People don't do it. People should but people don't.So do we pull the plug?.....Well?Here we begin to tread a bunch of slippery slope arguments. Some will say that if we expect everyone to simply do the things that they ought to do then we'll never live in a civilized society and we might as well give up on the whole grand experiment of American democracy. Others will say that by protecting people from the consequences of their actions or inactions that we're already on a slippery slope that jeopardizes our civilized society so we might as well give up on the whole experiment of American democracy.I don't want to go to either of those places. How then do we move forward when many of our great debates can be reduced to this elemental question?The best answer I have – which will be unsatisfying to those who crave certainty – is by taking it one step at a time. There are lines and boundaries that we all have to balance individually and all have to balance together. I understand that pragmatism can be really frustrating to people who are looking for ideological clarity and yearn to be in a perfect world that we don't live in. (If you take issue with that stance, please reread Oh, the Places You'll Go! before getting on my case.)In the world we live in, I think we need to spend collective funds trying to persuade individuals to eat more fruits & vegetables, to exercise more, and to embrace education – and part of that is making those "good" things more accessible and available to everyone. How do we determine what is good? There are people who spend time studying things that have positive effects and things that have adverse effects and we drag them before peer-review panels and Congressional subcommittees and we make them defend their conclusions. And then we put those studies out there and put them into action.There are two other things to consider here in terms of individual action:Big MacsThe murder of Kitty GenoveseFor the first of the two above items, I'm of course alluding to America's 30+% obesity rate. With all due respect to the fine folks at McDonald's (fast food chain) who are perfectly welcome to offer and promote their array of fast food products, there are plenty of examples where people don't choose what is "best" for them of their own accord and it has broader consequences for the rest of us. (It also doesn't help that moderation went out of style in this country in the early 1980s.) These individual choices – all combined – are a major contributor to skyrocketing health care costs in this country. It is not too different with education, thinking, and general media consumption. Absent active encouragement from social institutions of more constructive behaviors, a non-trivial percentage of the population will opt for the "lowest energy required at the lowest price presented" offering available to them. The Public Broadcasters are such institutions. As for "lowest energy required" offerings that come out of the private sector, I have two words: Jersey Shore. There may be 57 million channels these days, but there is still nothing on.An aside: I'd like to observe that churches can be great social institutions for encouraging more constructive behaviors; unfortunately, though, some churches and religious denominations are constructed on questionable foundations, too resistant to change, and/or are otherwise dangerously rigid. Some of those even have their own television networks. That's a conversation for another day, though.That brings me to my second point about individual action: there is a well-documented sociopsychological phenomenon known as Diffusion of Responsibility. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility Individuals tend to assume that either others are responsible for taking action or have already done so. The phenomenon tends to occur in groups of people above a certain critical size and when responsibility is not explicitly assigned – and is more likely to occur in conditions of anonymity. One of the most famous examples of this phenomenon was the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese; the crime had 38 witnesses and no one called the police because everyone assumed that someone else was taking care of it. When you expand that pool to a broadcast television audience and the level of urgency is that of a pledge drive, it's easy and low energy to think, "someone else has got it covered."If your reaction is, "if people won't pay then we shouldn't offer it," then please loop back to the bolded, "So do we pull the plug?" above.Moving on.You may be wondering about perceived bias.Which bias? The accusations of liberal bias or the accusations of conservative bias?http://mediamatters.org/research/2005/06/16/noonan-claimed-everyone-knows-pbs-has-liberal-b/133349http://www.usnews.com/usnews/culture/articles/050623/23cpb.htmhttp://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2671The Public Broadcasters get hit from both sides of the political aisle, which I take as a sign of doing something right. The content that gets put out there is subject to the scrutiny of a partisan Congress – and for all of the threats, CPB funding keeps increasing over time – even through the early 2000s where the ostensibly conservative Republican Party controlled both houses of Congress and the White House. http://www.cpb.org/appropriation/history.html If you consider the fact of PBS' receiving tax dollars via the CPB an affront to Conservatism, there's not much I can do for you if you don't buy the case I've made thus far.I strongly believe that the benefits are well worth the costs, but...Read Marco North's answer. I come out in a different place in my conclusions, but I don't dispute his observations. The benefit of the broadcast medium is wide audience access and nearly 100% household reach. The downsides are high barriers to entry, high capital costs to maintain, and lots of middlemen in the operating and production structures.Yes. I am obliquely stating that there are some places where money hemmor - OH MY GOODNESS! Look overhead! Is that an F-35??? No - my bad. Just a pigeon. We still don't have any F-35's.The future heralds something different, though. When Internet household penetration gets to 95+% and approaches the reach of broadcast, the benefit of the expensive broadcast infrastructure goes away and we can focus entirely on promoting quality content which is being made in abundance online for a tiny fraction of the production cost. The future is Khan Academy, Coursera, MITx, Udacity, iTunes U, Podcasts, random how-to videos that individuals upload to YouTube, and expansive conversations about politics and public affairs on Q&A Websites.It is technically possible for many of the people reading this to shoot & edit a video on their smartphone and then post that video for public consumption. Once we get to the point where everyone has the ability to do that and access to what everyone else is doing, it's a whole different ballgame. We're not there yet (http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/us.htm), but the day is coming.CODA(If you don't know what that is, you should probably listen to a classical music program – perhaps on a public radio station.)This answer went through more drafts and course adjustments then pretty much anything else I've written here. Somewhat ironically, the biggest reasons that it was challenging for me to approach this subject in a balanced and reasonable fashion are a host of balanced and reasonable people that have entered my life via public broadcasting. Here's my top ten:#1: Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers)I count Fred Rogers as a personal hero. I LOVED Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood as a child and his attitude to creativity, make believe, and imagination. I went to college in Pittsburgh, PA – in Mr. Rogers REAL neighborhood. WQED Pittsburgh, where the show was filmed and produced, was between my apartment and the Carnegie Mellon campus. The School of Drama did the annual "Television Project" over at the station, and the set for King Friday's castle was along the wall. These days, I have a wooden "Neighborhood Trolley" sitting on my window sill as a constant reminder of that model of amazing human decency and sincere commitment to bettering the lives of the young.#2: LeVar BurtonSome people hold that LeVar Burton's most important cultural contribution is his role as Kunta Kinte in the Roots TV miniseries. Others will say that it was as Geordi LaForge in Star Trek: The Next Generation (TV series). Without a doubt in my mind, the most important work that Burton has done has been on Reading Rainbow (Children's Television Show). The show featured great books for children to read and children themselves reporting on their favorite books. (A child reporting on Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport is etched in my own childhood memory.) These days he's continuing the work in the form of an iPad app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reading-rainbow/id512350210?mt=8#3 Jim HensonC'mon. You KNEW he was going to be on this list.#4: Neil deGrasse Tyson (astronomer)And you had to guess that he was going to be on this list too. Following in the footsteps of people like, Don "Mr. Wizard" Herbert, Bill Nye, and most importantly his mentor Carl Sagan, Tyson is currently America's foremost voice for Science. And he makes it AWESOME.#5: Sylvia Poggioli#6: Lourdes Garcia-NavarroI'm pairing #5 and #6 together. I listen to NPR most of the time when I'm driving and part of the reason for that is because actual Journalism occurs. The foreign correspondents on NPR – most notably Poggioli and Garcia-Navarro – provide what I hold to be the best coverage and insight into what's going on in the broader world. I'm incredibly grateful for their work and the stories they bring home.#7: Terry GrossFresh Air is what an interview show ought to be. Terry can sit for an hour with just about anyone and plumb the depths of their life story, interests, and opinions. Interview "segments" almost anywhere else usually deliver little except talking points or a plug for a new book or movie. Terry Gross gets their story told. Amongst my personal favorites are her two interviews of Tom Waits – where she's practically giddy: http://www.npr.org/2011/03/04/134236977/tom-waits-a-raspy-voice-heads-to-the-hall-of-fame , http://www.npr.org/2011/10/31/141657227/tom-waits-the-fresh-air-interview#8: Louis RukeyserMy appreciation of Rukeyser is mostly nostalgic, and a large reason that he makes this list now is because of the current ridiculous state of what passes for financial reporting. Remember when this person, who exuded sober discipline and responsibility – at least in the mind of an elementary school kid who left the TV on after kids programming was over – was a public face of Wall Street and Investing?#9: Kai RyssdalWith my #8 in mind, amongst the people still doing a good job with making business and financial news both insightful and interesting is American Public Media's Ryssdal. When I'm working on site somewhere, Marketplace is usually what I listen to during my evening commute. Ryssdal does a great job with feature stories and connecting the dots of the day's events to market responses.#10: Tom & Ray Magliozzi (Click & Clack, the Car Talk (talk show) guys)I close my personal top ten with two guys who would probably take offense at being called "balanced and reasonable." They're retiring now after 35 years on the radio. C'mon – admit it. You know you love 'em. And you know you've learned from 'em too.Honorable mentions: Ira Glass (who I imagine is way up on other people's lists), Peter Sagal & The "Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!" Cast, The Radiolab Team, and Garrison Keillor.And that, as they say, is a wrap.

First, a bit about Cirrus and the BRS.Morning of Nov 3, 2015.William Simon, a former CEO of Walmart, took off this morning in a Cirrus SR-22 from an airport in Bentonville, Arkansas, Walmart’s headquarters city. The flight was headed southwest, toward Texas; not long after takeoff it developed engine troubles, and the pilot made a U-turn back to Drake Field in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Close to the ground, he decided he wasn’t going to make it all the way to the runway, and he pulled a parachute that allowed his plane and its passengers to descend safely onto a road.This is, as best I can reckon, the 55th of these Cirrus parachute saves since 2000 (of the 6000+ Cirri now flying), which have saved several times that many lives.— James Fallows, How a Unique Airplane With a Parachute Saved a Business Executive▲A Cirrus SR-20 aircraft comes down to earth on a full-aircraft parachute.The decision to equip the SR20 with a parachute for the entire plane was based on an episode that had nearly killed the company's president, Alan Klapmeier.On May 2, 1984, when Klapmeier was twenty-five, he was taking a flying lesson at the Sauk-Prairie airport, just north of Madison, Wisconsin.It was late afternoon, and the sun was low in the sky. Klapmeier was in the pilot's seat, with an instructor sitting next to him.This was advanced training—Klapmeier had been flying for years.He had just taken off and was turning away from the airport, with the sun at his back.A plane was nearing the airport from the opposite direction, flying with the sun in the pilot's face.The other pilot, a friend of Klapmeier's, was in a variant of the Piper Cub called the PA-7, with no radio installed.Pilots may fly NRDO, or "no radio," as long as they stay out of certain kinds of controlled airspace.Every person who learns to fly is amazed by the reality of the "big sky"—you may fly for hours across several states and not see another plane except around airports.Most midair collisions therefore happen within five miles of an airport, and most happen in good weather, since on bad-weather days the planes are flying on instrument flight plans and are being separated by a controller's instructions.On this clear spring day, near an airport, Klapmeier's plane collided with the other one.His wing sliced through the strut that supported the other plane's wing.That plane lost its ability to fly and spun into the ground, killing the pilot.Klapmeier had to ram the control yoke hard to the left to keep his plane, which had lost part of its right wing, on course back toward the runway.As he neared a landing, Klapmeier realized that he had pushed the yoke as far left as it would go.Each of the next few seconds contained its own complete drama.Act I: the yoke would go no farther.Act II: the plane, gliding above the runway, began rolling over to the right.Act IV: the plane rolled so far that its disabled wing struck the ground, sending the craft into a cartwheeling crash.But Act IV never happened, because in Act III, with a second to spare, Klapmeier felt the wheels touch the runway.From such an episode many people would draw the conclusion that flying was too great a risk ever to expose themselves to it again.Alan Klapmeier concluded that existing small planes were too risky and had to be made safer.The military's solution to this problem was ejection seats, but these were heavy and expensive, and would not work with planes that had solid roofs rather than canopies to blow off. (They are also violent: ejection often breaks bones.) Nor did it make sense to equip every passenger in a cramped plane with a personal parachute, like those that early air-mail pilots wore. Among other problems, the doors on small planes are not made for fast or easy escape, especially from the back.Since the sixties certain "ultralight" planes had been equipped with rescue parachutes for the planes as a whole. Ultralights are the inexpensive homebuilt craft that satisfy many people's desire to fly but are not regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration. They crash with alarming frequency. In more than a hundred cases the pilots of ultralights have been saved by these parachutes. The Klapmeiers decided that a whole-plane parachute would come as standard equipment on the SR20—not an extra-price option, not something that could be either selected or disabled later on, but an integral part of the plane, like the energy-absorbing bumpers in modern cars. The SR20 — and now the SR22 — are now the first and only "certified" planes—that is, one approved by the FAA for general sale—so equipped.Freedom of the SkiesThe idea of a parachute that in case of dire emergency would lower the whole airplane, occupants and all, safely to the ground isn’t a new one. Back in the 1940s, magazines featured stories and illustrations of several similar concepts, including ones for airliners and others where the wings were shed at deployment.None came to pass.Then, in 1975 Boris Popov came up with an idea as he was falling 400 feet to what would surely be his death after his ultra-light came apart in mid-flight. Popov didn’t think he’d live to work on the idea—a rocket-enabled parachute that would rescue not just the pilot but the entire airplane—but, improbably, he survived the fall.Within a few years he had developed a simple, light rocket-propelled parachute system that would go into thousands of ultralight and light experimental airplanes.By the 1990s parachutes manufactured by the company Popov had founded, Ballistic Recovery Systems (BRS), had proven their value in very light and ultralight airplanes with more than 150 documented lives saved.But general aviation types didn’t pay much attention, not even when, in the 1990s.BRS got a system certified for retrofit into Cessna I50s.It wasn’t until Cirrus Design. a new company looking to certify a composite four-seater, announced that it would put a chute in the airplane, that people started paying much attention.Cirrus co-founder Alan Klapmeier, who years earlier had survived a midair collision, knew from first-hand experience that there were certain circumstances under which there was nothing further the pilot could do. The chute, Klapmeier claimed, would allow pilots that last ditch chance to save the lives of the airplane’s occupants, and Cirrus committed to it from the get-go.Today there are around 1,500 BRS systems flying in Cirrus SR20 and SR22 single-engine airplanes and many more in ultralight and experimental light airplanes.▲Cirrus down: all four occupants unhurt!▲Cirrus down in the trees — but alive to tell the story!Even before the SR20 was certified, it became apparent that a parachute in a certified airplane would polarize pilots, and it has. While anti-chute pilots take issue on several grounds, the most common complaint remains that the system takes control away from the pilot. And there’s no denying that once the red handle is pulled, everybody onboard is along for the ride.Some pilots felt as though, and they put it in these words, “real pilots don’t need chutes.”Another argument is that pilots will be pulling the chute willy-nilly. It’s rare, but there have been cases of pilots making questionable deployments in light experimental airplanes equipped with chutes.These pulls took place in perfectly flyable airplanes when the pilot panicked, in a couple of instances because of extremely gusty conditions, fearing that he might lose control of the airplane.BRS has long argued that because pilots do sometimes die because they panic, the use of the chute in those situations, while not ideal, was appropriate.As James Fallows says, small aircraft flight is perilous. And the parachutes make it less so.But is it so for big aircraft?The argument has gone on since the 1930s.A pilot, who at the time simply identified himself as “T-003”, conducted a survey of attitudes among transport pilots and passengers regarding the use of parachutes.PUT yourself in this situation, in any capacity.A plane load of passengers bound on one of the many scheduled runs that traverse this country.A competent pilot, perhaps a co-pilot and steward.A goodly number of passengers, about half of them women.One moment sailing serenely along, and then, something wrong.A violent storm with impassable flying weather, broken ailerons, rudder or elevators or their controls, engine failure over the mountains—you can use your own imagination, but things look bad in this hypothetical case.That cool grizzled old fellow near the door hums softly to himself and keeps his eye on the pilot.The other passengers look at each other askance.The pilot, or his co-partner, comes into the passenger cabin and—but let’s break off to ask some questions.Should parachutes be available for these passengers and the crew?If they were, would these same passengers use them without delay?Would all the passengers use them?How about that hysterical woman back of the pilot’s cabin or that glassy eyed, soft looking fellow who stares straight ahead as the pilot leans over to shout in his ear?Would the pilot run for the door and use his ‘chute without waiting to see his passengers clear of the plane?How about you, reader, would you use your parachute?Would you step out into space, then pull the rip-cord and float down to safety?COPYING the actions of an Inquiring Reporter on a large metropolitan daily I ventured out after first-hand information.My questions were casual ones; I tried to catch my subjects off guard so that a truthful answer would be forthcoming instead of a studied one which was not the truthful reaction of the one being interviewed.In the course of my interviews I contacted the Operations Managers or other officials of four airlines and one flying school, ten transport pilots, ten people who habitually travel by air on scheduled lines, ten who would like to travel in this manner but who have never had the opportunity to do so and ten who frankly admitted they had no desire to travel by air, to fly in any other manner or to have anything to do with airplanes and who said they wouldn’t be dragged, etc.—you’ve met the kind.To tell the truth I interviewed many more than the 45 people already mentioned, as about three out of every five whom I essayed to question appeared to fall in the class of those who would like to travel by air but who have never had the opportunity to do so.All four flying managers were against the use of parachutes in connection with transport flying, although all admitted the worth of these aerial life preservers in military flying, in instruction work or in flying mail.The replies of my other victims I have tabulated.Those of men or women were so much the same that sex, apparently, makes no difference in point of view or attitude toward the use of parachutes.CLASS A were ten pilots who had had considerable experience flying passenger transports on scheduled runs, all of them reliable, dependable fellows of mature judgment.Curiously enough, seven of them had never been in a tight place while flying passengers.Class B consisted of five men and five women.Three of these were professional people, four in business, one a housewife, one man a mechanic and the tenth air traveler announced her-self as a beautician.Class C consisted of six men and four women. Of these, three men were mechanics, one in business, one a clerical worker and one a professional man.Two of the four women were housewives, one a clerical worker and the other a business woman.Class D consisted of four men and six women.I could find no mechanics who admitted a dislike or distrust for air travel; of the four men in Class D two owned their own business, and two were clerical workers.Four of the six women were housewives, one was a clerical worker and the other a nurse. The four men all owned their own homes and were heads of families.It was just by chance that I found six women who professed a dislike for the air.Two of the women in Class C had husbands in Class D.According to my experience in this interview which began soon after the “Rockne crash,” men with families and owning their own homes were more prone to be groundlings than their wives.(The death of Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne in the crash of TWA Flight 599 on March 31, 1931, in a Fokker F-10 Trimotor resulted in more than just the death of the football legend and seven others — it was a pivotal moment in early airline and aviation safety. It put an end to the wooden construction era. Wood was an outcast until World War II forced the Americans to look at wood again.)Apparently mechanics are the most self-reliant and open minded on the subject of aviation in all its phases.Their replies to my questions were either direct with a sensible reason or were thoughtful and analytical.Probably the reason not more of them flew was that of expense, as they were accustomed to using their cars to cover long distances.For the purpose of easy reference I have marked some of the blocks in my tabulations alphabetically.There was a proviso attached to the answers indicated by “a.”“Provided all passengers were free of the plane” these ten pilots added in qualifying their willingness to use parachutes in time of emergency.Five of these ten had been mail pilots, and eight of the ten had been Army or Navy pilot’s.These stated that for the first year or so of passenger hauling they felt decidedly uncomfortable without the parachute that had always been with them on their military, naval or mail flying.At first the presence of passengers for whom they were responsible worried them considerably but this feeling gradually wore off until now it is just part of their work to take the safety of the passengers into consideration.“Although,” added one of the pilots, “lately we’ve been getting more instructions concerning the comfort of the passengers than we’ve been get-ting on their safety.”I asked another question of these pilots.“If everyone were given the opportunity to jump and several re-fused, would you then bail out?”Three said they would, then immediately retracted that statement.“I honestly don’t know what I’d do then, it would depend upon circumstances,” was the answer of one young pilot. “I hope I’m never faced with such a situation.”Two pilots refused to answer, became suspicious and could no longer be interviewed.Five pilots stated immediately that they would stick with the plane.“Much as I would want to jump, my place would be with the plane,” stated a pilot a bit older than average, incidentally the father of three children.“It would be too dangerous a precedent to have pilots jump, leaving their passengers behind them. It’s one of those things you couldn’t do. Not with paying passengers. With members of the crew, say in a military bomber, where these passengers are trained to obey their leader, conditions are different and refusal to obey the pilot’s order to jump should not jeopardize the pilot’s life.“But passengers embark on the plane with faith in its safety.“I’m no hero or posing as one, but in this game there’s things you can do and things that just aren’t done.”The lad that was doubtful whether parachutes should be used on transports (indicated by “b”) had just engaged in a spirited discussion on this subject with some of his fellows, who had taken the discussion away from him and made him their audience.He had heard so many pros and cons that he stated his mind was not made up on the subject.From the answers marked “c” we see that seasoned air travellers are more confident of their own ability to obey the command “JUMP” than they are of their fellow travellers.Incidentally the 6 air travellers answering “Yes” to the second question were the same who answered “Yes” to the third.The others who doubted the willingness of the other fellow to use his parachute did not desire parachutes as standard airplane equipment, thus indicating their unwillingness to have any of the others left behind when the order came to clear the plane.Comparisons of figures in the answers of Classes B, C and D indicate as much a distrust of parachutes as of airplanes in those who were afraid to fiy.One airway operator commented on this fact.“It shows conclusively,” said he, “that the presence of parachutes contributes in no small way to prospective passengers’ distrust in air travel.“The air is still a bit more mysterious than the sea to Mr. and Mrs. Public. Life belts and boats on a ship are taken as a matter of course, but not aerial life preservers on an airplane.“The time will come when, through blind flying development, and radio design, construction and communications in general, as well as development in airplanes and engines, there will be no such things as accidents, or a minimum of them anyway.That’s what the trend is in air travel, to work away from the necessity of parachutes.”Yet Major Falk Harmel, the custodian of the records of the Caterpillar Club, differs.Until airplanes, pilots and fog-flying are actually safe, parachutes should be provided for those passengers who wish to use them, he states.They can be made comfortable and handy to don, he claims, adding that the millennium in aircraft operation has not yet arrived, and until it does the parachute should be present as an ace-in-the-hole for those who want to use it.So how do you feel about it?Loss of control due to VFR pilots getting into IFR conditions, simply getting lost, single-engine failure, or a thousand other reasons are problems of general aviation, not transport category aircraft and pilots.There are several harrying accounts of the last desperate minutes of communications between ATC and VFR-only pilots who had flown their planes into IMC. The outcome was predictably tragic. Fuel exhaustion was another common scenario. This will NEVER happen with transport-category pilots.In theory, you’re supposed to pull the parachute before you get within 1000 feet of the ground, for the parachute to work as planned and level out the plane for a three-point (as opposed to nose-down) touchdown.Almost all transport-aviation accidents have occurred in the Approach and Landing phase, resulting in a world wide adoption of an Approach-And-Landing Accidents-Reduction (ALAR) programme with a few Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) thrown in.And of course you know how Pan Am’s 747 at Lockerbie and TWA 800 went down.A parachute will be of utterly no use in any of these scenarios .It is 17 years since the US had a major accident with large passenger aircraft.They are the ONLY country in the world with the resources and the technology to develop a full-aircraft parachute system.But they will not do it.Why should they? There is absolutely no need at all!But one wonders: could this accident have been averted:▲On a clear, unseasonably hot morning on September 25, 1978, residents of San Diego’s North Park neighborhood were getting their days underway — not realizing they were soon to be in the center of what would become the deadliest plane crash in California history. Pacific Southwest Airlines flight 182, a Boeing 727 inbound from Sacramento after a stop in Los Angeles, collided with a Cessna being piloted by a student undergoing instrument flight training, killing all 137 people on both planes as well as 7 more on the ground. As with most air disasters, there was no one root cause, but rather a series of problems and events which led to the catastrophe.The crew of PSA 182 lost sight of the Cessna and failed to report the loss of visual contact to air traffic control. Air traffic control was not blameless either, for they failed to use radar to maintain clearances and relied on the pilot’s visual separation. Finally, the Cessna pilot, for reasons unknown, deviated from his assigned heading and did not report the course change to ATC.