Prince Harry to receive a Living Legend of Aviation award

[mrsmingleton]

https://www.hellomagazine.com/royalty/510988/prince-harry-ordered-huge-new-honour-star-studded-ceremony/

The Wright Brothers will be turning in their graves. I wonder what Buzz thinks .

My milkshake, Harry is well liked by the Well Child Awards organisation. He’s being doing it for 13 or so years. They don’t have a problem with him. And, like his mother, he has a natural friendly ease with kids and they respond to that. We saw it again with the families at the Invictus Games. I think he’s a good fit for kids’ charities. They seem to like him.

My view is it’s relentless, the dodgy interviews, the book, clearly behind endgame at the end of last year. It’s never bloody ending. Then all the nonsense, fake high speed car chases, fake Dior work, fake bloody everything.

Sure, but liking him isn’t the point, the man is a druggie, wrote of his kills like the people were dehumanised, tells outright lies, pretends it’s his memory, unless of course it’s a faux car chase, the point is he’s no role model.

And that's fine, his issues with substances are not necessarily incompatible with children's wellbeing causes if handled correctly. His "survival" story is not incompatible when dealing with kids with similar backgrounds of loss, mental health issues etc.

However, this specific charity is about aviation. Kids wanting to be pilots or excel in the aviation industry and have long careers in the field need to have role models that show them the way. He got into Sandhurst through (likely) nepotism, not hard work. His army career was not unusual or distinguished compared to other servicemen in similar roles, and he'd written some disturbing stuff about his attitude to other human beings whilst serving (and I will include his racism towards a fellow cadet in this). Post army, he seems to have done little or nothing in the field of aviation, and his self documented drug use would prevent him from doing so. There's no evidence of a love of aviation at all. So to me, it makes no sense for him to be inspirational to children in this particular organisation.

Do enough flying and you are probably going to be involved in a few incidents

You'd hope most pilots aren't as careless as Ford though. I'd expect a legend of aviation to have a better safety record.

Harrison Ford's plane in near miss after wrongly crossing a runway | US News | Sky News

@CathyorClaire

I think it's unfair to start pointing the finger at Ford and accusing him of being unsafe...if he was an outlier in safety terms and/or started failing check rides the FAA would have pulled his licence - they haven't so far.

Most of us who have got hours in the logbook and do hold or have held licences will certainly have had reportable incidents and there are few kicking around who have had accidents.

If you step outside the very safe world of airline flying the risk level starts to go up and it certainly ramps up if you start flying older single engined types around (something the high earners like doing), or single engined helicopters or high performance aircraft.

As far as the "Legends" and safety records go from memory the late Gene Cernan ("Legend") crashed a helicopter during training, Jim Lovell ("Legend") almost lost a spacecraft and Sully ("Legend) had a very well publicised accident. I'm sure if you dug around you'd find plenty of other Legends who certainly had incidents or probably a few accidents.

In Ford's defence it may also be worth pointing out that he probably did as good a job as could be expected in the circumstances when it came to the engine failure (that wasn't his doing) on his Ryan PT-22 that ended up on a golf course....

Ref Ford's PT-22 accident, this might help:

https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/harrison-ford-accident/

Neil Armstrong ejecting from the incredibly unstable looking lunar landing training vehicle.

@Uricon2
Thanks for that, FWIW Armstrong lost at least one other aircraft (due to clipping a wing on cables, though it was during the Korean war so we can probably forgive him that one...)

I've enjoyed this thread. It's become less about Harry and his legendary etc etc status and included lots of interesting stories about flying.

@notimagain i have found your posts very informative.

Most of us who have got hours in the logbook and do hold or have held licences will certainly have had reportable incidents and there are few kicking around who have had accidents.

Yes. But what percentage of those have accepted or even been nominated for a legends of aviation award?

Well, Neil Armstrong for a start.

You may have heard of him. First human to walk on the moon.

He was also a combat pilot but managed never to talk about his missions as destroying "chess pieces".

I'll be honest and fess up that I'm really not quite sure what point you are trying to make here.

Firstly the "Legends.." award doesn't claim to be some sort of flight safety award...there are other organisations that dole those out...

Secondly the vast vast majority of pilots with reasonable hours will have been involved in an incident or an occurrence..I'll stick a link in at the end so you can browse some UK examples..that'll hopefully demonstrate how many incident reports get filed every year, that a lot of them are very benign and many are not the fault of the pilot(s) . If you have a no incidents or occurrence rule for Legends you'd have pretty much nobody to nominate.

Finally if you had a no accidents rule then you rule out the likes of Sullenberger. He's been major lobbyist and advocate for flight safety, co-chaired a charity that gives kids the opportunity to fly and also been involved in kids charities and outside aviation has also been in anti-suicide activist due to family history...do you want to rule the likes of him out?

https://www.caa.co.uk/data-and-analysis/safety-and-security/mandatory-occurrence-reports/

https://nbaa.org/about/awards/flying-safety-awards/2022-flying-safety-award-recipients/

@BrittleVeneers Michael Dorn is an obsessive and accomplished pilot, who has for example flown with both The Blue Angles and The Thunderbirds (and no, not The Thunderbirds are GO! ones) and would actually be deserving of an award like this.

Good to know.

Well yes, Trilateralcommission3 naming Harry as an awardee certainly has had the effect of raising the profile of the awards ( someone will come along to say it’s a negative but I don’t agree).

SO many people who , just one week ago, were oblivious to the existence of the awards are now aware to the point that they are debating whether Harry is a worthy recipient or not. It’s pretty funny actually, Posters saying Harry and Meghan are irrelevant etc.. well…apparently they are still very relevant

Well all this debate has certainly raised the level of these particular awards from “what the hell are those? to “oh I heard about those”…so somebody somewhere has done a good job.

Even so terms of aviation a “Legends” award might be nice to have but the prized awards that would sit front and centre of the mantlepiece or the display cabinet are things like the Collier and the Iven C. Kincheloe….Not many are worthy of those.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collier_Trophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iven_C._Kincheloe_Award

I still think that, while "Living Legends of Aviation" sounds a good title, a member of the Royal Family accepting an award from Kiddie Hawk Aviation Academy is embarrassing.

I honestly thought it was a joke or scam when I first heard that Harry was accepting an award from "Kiddie Hawk" - I couldn't believe it was true.

I think the whole episode has served to raise awareness that many charities in the US use awards as a fundraising strategy where wealthy recipients pay to receive awards and bring friends and family who each pay several thousand dollars to attend the fundraiser.

I'm actually all for anything that gets kids interested in aviation/space exploration. I'm one of the generation of kids who had Saturn V rockets taking off seemingly every 5 minutes and watched the Eagle land and the first moonwalk as it happened. We were very lucky.

It would be nice if Harry followed up on this award to do actual work with the organisation and it will be interesting to see if he does.

@Uricon2

It would be nice if Harry followed up on this award to do actual work with the organisation and it will be interesting to see if he does.

Agreed.

I think it'll be interesting to hear or read his acceptance speech on Friday.

If he is smart and has any awareness at all he'll open with something along the lines of "No-one was more surprised than me when I heard I was going to get this award...", burble on a bit, and then make some commitment to the charity...

If instead it's anything close to "Thanks for recognising my flying achievements".... we will know he's existing in a bubble.

@notimagain my thoughts too. Serious humility, self deprecation and drawing attention to others/the charity are called for. It will be an indication of whether he is indeed on Planet Harry as to whether he does this, or not.

I'll be honest and fess up that I'm really not quite sure what point you are trying to make here.

I'm trying to make the point (obviously badly) that at least some of the awards from this organisation appear to be an exercise in massaging celebrity egos rather than a celebration of genuine talent.

Interesting take on the whole thing here:

If Harrison Ford and John Travolta can be crowned living legends of aviation, why not Prince Harry? | Marina Hyde | The Guardian

If he is smart and has any awareness at all he'll open with something along the lines of "No-one was more surprised than me when I heard I was going to get this award...", burble on a bit, and then make some commitment to the charity...

Oh my god, I hope for his sake he doesn't say something like 'no one was more surprised than me .....' if it turns out, as strongly suspected, that he did in fact buy the award for himself😂.