Quote Originally Posted by mauied1101
I know everyone here is just talkin' and has nothing to do with it, but being in DC on 9/11 and worrying about folks in NY at the time, with the publicity of the 9/11 movie coming out, this text just hits me kinda not-so-good timing. I dunno, mebbe I'm being a little sensitive or reading this wrong, but I just keep seeing "7500 - I am being hijacked" and "7700 - Declared emergency" and it just reminds me of things and gets me in the dumps.

Sorry guys... I know y'all weren't thinking about it, but this was probably lingo that I could have probably lived without knowing...

Oh, boy! You ain't kidding. That's something that will always be engraved in eveyone's mind, especially mine since I was heavily into aviation at the time. However, those squak codes have helped a bunch of people get out of some pretty hairy situations over the years. The problem is we just don't hear about it when the outcome is good, or if we hear about someone surviving a forced landing we don't hear about the procedures and safeguards built into the system that help. I've been a pilot for a long time, and because I was in the business for a while, I have heard of several people who were located quickly after a forced landing partly because they were being tracked on radar and easily identifiable. Surprisingly, it's not the landing that gets people most of the time, it's the exposure to elements and delays in finding them. These procedures have helped to avert a lot of tragedy.

If you think about it in those terms it might help.