Two days ago, in Austin, a pilot committed suicide by crashing his aircraft into a building. This is before all a tragedy and my thoughts go to the victims and their relatives. But this is also an isolated act from a desperate individual, who left a suicide manifesto behind him, so that there are no doubts this was not an accident. Each time an aircraft hits a building, ugly memories come back to the surface, and some of the this-should-never-again-let’s-regulate activists are on steroids for weeks.

Naturally, as a pilot, I’m against new, more constraining regulations. I had to live my passion for flying in a much harder environment after the 9/11 events, and I understand the role and reasons behind some of the new rules. However, in this case, we should really consider what could be changed to prevent such dramatic events. Sometimes, the forces driving someone to suicide act suddenly, and sometimes they are at work for long times. In this case, the pilot went through a careful preparation phase. The building he hit was not selected randomly. This was the well prepared action of the final act of a pilot.

If he had not be a pilot, the things would probably have been similar. He could have hit the building with a van, a truck, or try to put himself on fire at the reception desk, who knows ? It is not because a light aircraft was used by someone in despair to commit suicide that new restrictions should be put in place. There is simply no way to read the mind of someone, and until we can get suicidal people detectors, there will be no way to do anything sensible. Pilots undergo periodical medical examination but suicidal trends can develop very quickly, sometimes within hours if not minutes.

AOPA’s CEO Craig Fuller posted this note on his blog with some facts and perspective regarding the number of suicides per year in the USA. It makes very clear that the aviation community contributes very little to these numbers. So please, dear rule makers, try not to over-react this time, and take the time to understand what did go on. It is not always possible to identify what went wrong and make a rule against that. Suicidal people which run along such a plan are very determined and when you decided to bring your life to an end, there’s not a lot of things that can stop you…

This is a very sad story, and the whole aviation community will have to fight again to make sure our freedom to fly does not get even more restricted because of the acts of an isolated people…