Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe escapes runway incident unharmed

I got some news for you. There's not going to be private aviation if we don't have fighters like Jim Inhofe going to bat for us. I'm willing to over-look an 81 year old pilot making mistakes, after all, we have Southwest pilots landing on the wrong airports, military guys running out of gas, and Asian pilots who can't land an airliner on a hand flown approach in VFR conditions. There is plenty of incompetence to go around I think. More, he's my hero for still flying at all at 81. We've had a 20% drop in private pilots in the decades preceding 2014. Manufacturers produced around a thousand new piston singles in 2014. Private Aviation is on its deathbed thanks to a lot of reasons but in particular lawyers, the FAA, and idiots in Congress.

The next time you drive by a GA ramp notice two things. The gold plated business jets and the ancient wrecks known by names like Piper, Cessna, Mooney, Beech, and others. The business jet industry is thriving supporting the gilded class. The rest of GA is almost dead. We went from a million pilots and building 40,000 small planes a year post WWII to 650,000 pilots total, including commercial pilots, and a thousand small planes a year today. The reason most GA ramps are littered with old junk is because of lawyers, the FAA, and Congress. Jim Inhofe is one of the few who recognizes the problem and is pushing back for the benefit of all of us. I could go into a lot more detail, but I'll spare this particular audience.