Travolta - did he ever ditch an aircraft?

"Paul Tomblin" wrote:
Because he goes around making himself out to be a big hero,
telling the non-flying public that "most pilots" wouldn't have
been able to handle it.

I refuse to believe that this was a failure mode that would
kill "most pilots".

Travolta is also a $cientologist, which I consider prima facia evidence
of unreliability.
--
Dan
C172RG at BFM
(remove pants to reply by email)

In a previous article, "Dan Luke" said:
Travolta is also a $cientologist, which I consider prima facia evidence
of unreliability.

Battlefield Earth was proof enough of that.


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
Alright. Talk. Don't make me reach over there and pull your still-pumping
heart out from the gaping hole you used to call a chest whilst breaking
your sternum and playing air guitar with your ribcage. -- Tai

TheShootingSports wrote:

You might want to adjust your Outlook settings to not post html. Set it
to text-only. Currently I see this:

This is a multi-part message in MIME format. [...] Content-Type:
text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding:
quoted-printable !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0
Transitional//EN" HTMLHEAD META http-equiv=Content-Type
content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" META content="MSHTML
6.00.2800.1400" name=GENERATOR STYLE/STYLE /HEAD BODY
DIVFONT face=Arial size=2Hi all,/FONT/DIV DIVFONT
face=Arial size=2/FONT /DIV DIVFONT face=Arial size=2I
had once heard that John Travolta once ditched an aircraft. I have
never heard this, but to settle a "discussion" could someone tell me
if he did in fact successfully ditch an aircraft ever in his years of
flying?/FONT/DIV DIVFONT face=Arial size=2/FONT /DIV
DIVFONT face=Arial size=2Supposedly, he was all alone when this
[...]

Which doesn't make your post very easy to read. Mind you you, Usenet is
supposed to be a non-html medium...

Just a friendly hint.

Cheers,
Jens

--
I don't accept any emails right now. Usenet replys only.

Peter,

Thank goodness we have little people in this world who work so hard to
tear down those who happen to have worked even harder and succeeded in
doing well. I was never a fan of Mr. Travolta until the movie
"Phenomena". Nevertheless, I did pay attention to a very successful
actor who liked airplanes and who took the trouble to learn a great
deal about them and how to fly them rather than behave as do so many
musicians and actors and simply trash the interiors of the bizjets in
which they ride.

Travolta bought and was type rated in the DC-3 fairly early in his
career. Do you have that rating? He later was type rated in various
jets, including the 707, having completed the training and passed the
checkride required by Qantas which put its name on Travolta's airplane
on an around the world flight he made as a part of a fundraiser for
charity. Have you done an aviation charity flight recently?

Travolta has given numerous interviews in which he has spoken
enthusiastically about his love for aviation. How the interviews were
slanted, I don't care, he spoke of his love for flight. "Worf" an
actor on Star Trek has given a massive number of interviews in support
of general aviation and worked with the EAA's Young Eagles program.
Harrison Ford is one of the biggest supporters general aviation has.
He just signed on to do another project in support of it.

BTW, a question for every single one of us general aviation pilots:
when was the last talk or program you gave on general aviation in your
area? How about the last time you testified or argued in front of
your local government in support of your airport?

It's real easy to cast aspersions on famous folks on the Internet,
yeah, that CB radio for those who can type, but how many of us are
actually getting out there and doing something to support the aviation
we care for?

All the best,
Rick


"Peter Duniho" wrote in message ...
"Rick Durden" wrote in message
m...
[...]
We can certainly use all of the folks like Travolta that our little
industry can get. He's certainly gotten a lot of good press and
attention for general aviation.

Such as?

As near as I can tell, the handful of "famous pilots" who might have gotten
more involved with aviation and done things to foster the industry have not
bothered. People aren't going around saying "hey, did you see that
interview with Travolta? I guess we don't really need all these silly
restrictions on general aviation after all", or "hey, did you see that
interview with Harrison? Turns out you DON'T need to be a rich actor to
learn to fly".

What little press people like that have received, all they've done is
reinforced the idea that flying is for rich folks who can afford the fancy
toys, and that when you restrict aviation, you're not really hurting anyone
who can't afford to be hurt a bit.

These are people who, if they cared to, could use their substantial media
presence to fight on behalf of general aviation. I've seen absolutely no
evidence that suggests they've ever bothered to try.

Pete

Paul,

Suppose you give us the procedure for "lost electrics" that is to be
followed....

Travolta was faced with a dark airplane in IMC. Let's put you in a
simulator and let's see how you handle it.

The published procedures in the FARs for lost comm assume the ability
to navigate. There are no published procedures when you cannot do so.
Travolta pulled it off. He and everyone in that airplane survived.
There is no way in the world that I will criticize him for how he
handled a total, complete and absolute emergency.

I've had a total electrical failure at night, once. Fortunately, it
was above a solid deck of clouds, not in it. Nevertheless, it was
pretty damn scary. I also had enough fuel to fly into forecast VMC
and was able to find an airport and land safely. I'm assuming you
have had much the same situation or you would not have the temerity to
criticize someone who had without having the experience yourself.
Please let us know the procedure you followed.

All the best,
Rick

(Paul Tomblin) wrote in message ...
In a previous article, "Wayne" said:
The TV show I saw said he was able to safely land where most pilots
would have failed.

Yes, that is how *he* tells the story. However, any instrument pilot
knows that there are procedures for lost comm and lost electrics which
would have worked for "most pilots", and he didn't use them.

Paul,

Please tell us how you would handle a complete electrical failure, at
night, in IMC when your flight instruments are not vacuum powered, but
are electrically driven.

It's funny, but very accomplished people, such as actors, sometimes
become very accomplished pilots as well. Ability in one area is not
necessarily mutually exculsive with the other. Danny Kaye, for one,
who set an around the world speed record in a Learjet. Another was
Bob Cummings who flew a Cessna Airmaster all over this country.
Arthur Godfrey flew his personal DC-3 (often single pilot) all over
the place and because he regularly landed it on his 2,500 foot long
farm strip in Virginia and because an Admiral who was also a naval
aviator was once aboard for the exercie, his short field technique was
later taught to naval aviators in piston powered equipment. You may
not like Mr. Travolta, but it just may be the case that he can truly
fly well.

But then again, because we in the aviation community are such a small
group of people, we do our best to promote aviation among the general
public by sniping at anyone within the community whom we perceive as
getting to big for his britches; thus we are assured that lots of
people will want to join our community.

All the best,
Rick

(Paul Tomblin) wrote in message ...
In a previous article, Billy Harvey said:
Why is it you criticize his actions here and yet a few posts ago you
stated:

This is only rumour, and I've never been able to find confirmation ...

Because he goes around making himself out to be a big hero, telling the
non-flying public that "most pilots" wouldn't have been able to handle it.

I refuse to believe that this was a failure mode that would kill "most
pilots".

"Wayne" wrote in message ...
The TV show I saw said he was able to safely land where most pilots
would have failed. Either could be true though.

Half the stories say he was in the back with his family when the
electrics failed and that it was a one-in-a-million outage that
couldn't be prevented.

The other half of stories claim he and his professional copilot goofed
up with the electrics checklist.

In either case, after trying for a while to debug things, they
spiraled down towards the brightest lit portion of the clouds using
only their tiny backup AI, by flashlight. I recall articles at the
time quoting the Tower personnel saying how weird it was to see a
totally dark plane land at night, but that it was no big deal all
around since they had noticed the transponder/radio failure and were
expecting the plane to land. They did blow the tires stopping since
they had no reverse thrust.

The upshort is that they managed to get the jet down safely, which is
better than others have done in similar situations.

[...] I think Travolta did the school work
and deserves his ratings, whatever they are.

See a description of his ratings at:

http://www.fly-net.org/aeromedia/travqagb.html

What about the interview with
Harrison? I never saw that one although I had heard he does fly...

Harrson is well known as a diligent pilot. For "Seven Days Seven
Nights" he learned to fly a Beaver, and he made sure the movie got a
lot of it right, too, down to pumping down the flaps. I'm sure
everyone also remembers not long ago when he (as a volunteer air
rescue squad member) flew his helicopter to save some climbers out in
the Tetons.

Best, Kev

"Rick Durden" wrote in message
m...
[irrelevant tirade snipped]
It's real easy to cast aspersions on famous folks on the Internet,
yeah, that CB radio for those who can type, but how many of us are
actually getting out there and doing something to support the aviation
we care for?

In other words, you have NO examples of instances where Travolta got "a lot
of good press and attention for general aviation".

It's funny that in your own post, at the same time that you make a lame
attempt to discredit me rather than answering the question, you criticize
the very sort of behavior that you are engaging in.

IMHO, if there were really "a lot of good press and attention for general
aviation", you'd be able to come up with at least a half dozen specific
examples of situations where Travolta actually made a real attempt to use
his public profile to improve general aviation.

Pete

In a previous article, (Rick Durden) said:
Please tell us how you would handle a complete electrical failure, at
night, in IMC when your flight instruments are not vacuum powered, but
are electrically driven.

I don't know, I don't have a type rating in a G4. People I know who *do*
have type ratings in jets assure me that there are ways to do it and it
wouldn't kill "most pilots", unless you count people without type ratings
on that aircraft in the list.


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

Harrson is well known as a diligent pilot. For "Seven Days Seven
Nights" he learned to fly a Beaver, and he made sure the movie got a
lot of it right, too, down to pumping down the flaps. I'm sure
everyone also remembers not long ago when he (as a volunteer air
rescue squad member) flew his helicopter to save some climbers out in
the Tetons.


2 years ago, I moved to Germany for work. Two days earlier I had
solo'd. When I got to Germany, the only English I heard was
CNN. They had an interview with him about acting in which they asked
him how long he plans on acting. He replied, "There is nothing
that he finds more challenging and stimulating, other than flying,
than acting." Although it was more directed to the non-pilot, it
left me with the impression that he is a very serious pilot....
of course I can't back this up but just the impression.

Gerald