The Ptolemaic Fallacy of A2

2+2 = 2?  Not what I learned at Lincoln School with Mrs. Ayres.

Who got rendered here?

Well, we're in day whatever.  I have abandoned the pretense that I have a life, or a company to run, or even self-worth.

I guess the whole Hawkeye thing is something I should have expurgated in the last round of therapy.

I do think this is all going to mercifully end later today, certainly by tomorrow.  Ferentz has too much class to leave everyone twisting in the wind longer than that.  If I'm wrong, I'm definitely taking up D-III football next year -- Go Yeomen -- and getting a new hobby, like collecting Facebook friends.

So:

The Flightaware.com business at left was imminently predictable.  In fact, I guess I did? a few days ago, huh.

Anyhow, last night while 700 Meeeechigan hysterics watched that flight transit the Joliet VOR and make the turn for YIP, supposedly two parties (with pitchforks, torches a sixpacks of Mickey's) went to the airport and debunked the idea that purpose of the flight was to deliver Ferentz.

"Crew swap," they said.  "Crew timed out in Cedar Rapids."  Supposedly the Detroit Channel 4 team was there, writing this down.  (No word as to whether or not some mannequin said, "Tell us how you feel, right now, having executed this 'crew swap.')

I have a few thousand hours as PIC in aircraft, used to have a jet in one of the companies I ran, and have a few friends who still fly for a living.  I couldn't figure out, at first, why this neat little explanation didn't work for me.

At 2:30 I sobe--- ... I mean I figured it out.  Here's why this story is funny.

1.  Sure, I understand that Ann Arbor is the center of the universe.  So all foreign objects are delivered ... there.  They wouldn't deliver a package, a person, to CID before anyone figured out was going on and staked out the field.  Right?  

2.  Crew swap trope:  assume a -20 costs a fully loaded $3000/hour to run.  It might be a little less; might be more; depends on how old the plane is and whether or not, and how its capital cost is being currently amortized.  Anyhow, it ain't cheap.  Hobbs time (engine start to shut down) is easily 90 minutes each way.  That's minimum.  They spent $10,000 to deadhead a couple of pilots who make, combined $12K a month?

3.  But wait.  That's BS.  Only two pilots got off the plane.  Who swapped?  Why weren't the two timed out guys on the flight home?  Did the timed out pilots fly home -- timed-out?  I guess it's possible, they could fly home under Part 91 when the crew was illegal on a Part 135-rule flight (with passengers).  Insurers love that sort of thing, ya, you betcha.

4.  Did another JetUSA aircraft leave CID late last night?  If not, there was no trip to fly and no reason to swap crews.

5.  Does anyone think it would be hard to come up with a straight, bald-faced lie to explain that trip?  "We picked up this little doo-hickey that GM needs to keep the line going tonight."  "We need this super-duper piece of avionics back from Collins in order to fly an international trip tomorrow."  But, crew swap?  Where, again, is that timed-out crew?  Who was flying out of CID last night on another JetUSA trip.

There's an elegance to the supposed "crew swap" tale, by those CIA-for-a-day JetUSA dudes (or dudettes).  There's a crew swap in progress, all right, only they don't fly aircraft.  You never know when you're going to be sitting next to an entertaining wag, in charter aviation.  (Most of the bores go to the airlines.)

There you go.  Logic and arithmetic and aviation underwriters don't sustain this story.

You get like this when you live in DC and your cellphone dies in the same place every day, driving down the Parkway past Langley.