Political Quotes

“I rise today as both chair of the Subcommittee on Aviation Safety but, more importantly, as a pilot who is only alive because of the swift actions of an experienced flight crew. I have lived the experience of piloting a Blackhawk that was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade in flight and entered into flight conditions immediately that flight simulators taught me would be catastrophic. But having the experience of flying in the toughest conditions had shown me that that was not the case. I have probably spent more hours in the most sophisticated flight simulators than any other Senator of this body, short of, of course, Senator Kelly, our astronaut. In my over a decade of training as a military pilot, every time--every single time--that we simulated a total loss of all aircraft avionics that would follow with a total loss of hydraulic power, we died in that simulator. We did this every year, and we simulated it over and over. It was not survivable. We never simulated an RPG explosion in the lap of one of the pilots wherein any of the crew could survive. Why did we never simulate that condition? Nobody ever imagined that it would ever happen and have the crew survive or that the aircraft would not break apart in flight. Yet, on that day in Iraq--on that day when that rocket-propelled grenade landed in my lap and exploded--we did. The aircraft held together, and we survived it.…”