USAToday, in typical sensationalistic fashion, presented a fictionalized piece about general aviation on June 18th. I found it to be inaccurate. Seems that I’m not the only one.
From AOPA:
A USA Today story, “Unfit for flight,” published June 18 “gets the general aviation safety record wrong, it ignores efforts by the industry to make general aviation safer, and it violates basic tenets of fairness and accuracy when it comes to good journalism,” AOPA said in response to the article.
The three-part report paints GA aircraft as death traps, pilots as “amateur,” and aircraft manufacturers as villains, and pits pilots against manufacturers. AOPA, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, and Textron had provided information to the reporter, information that was not included in the sensational, one-sided, inaccurate report.
In 1953 a presidential call sign was established by the Eisenhower Administration. The call sign stemmed from for two aircraft – Eastern Airlines flight 8610 and Air Force 8610 – entering the same airspace and which could have resulted in a midair incident. The Air Force aircraft was, at the time, carrying President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The first flight of a presidential aircraft with the call sign Air Force One was in 1959.