I drove by the airport on Kachemak Drive last Wednesday and saw a peculiar sight. There were a couple Homer Police cars, an airport fire truck and a couple of airport manager’s vehicles out on the runway.

Odd sight in and of itself, but even stranger when you see the Era Alaska aircraft sitting on the runway on its belly pan right next to all those vehicles. 

 In this lawsuit happy culture we live in with everybody wanting somebody to pay them for some slight they may or may not have instituted upon them, you can bet the lawsuits are going to fly. No pun intended.

While the ambulance-chasing lawyers all line up with their hands out, and they search for all the pain and suffering they can get their 30 percent or whatever of, let me be the first to say congratulations to those two pilots of that particular flight.

Let’s remember that, whether they made a human error or there was an issue with the aircraft, those two pilots put the plane down, kept it straight and upright, and everyone walked off the plane under their own power.

I’m sure the lawsuits are on the way, but I’m sticking up for the pilots and for what they did.

Phil Celtic