Sarah Buynovksy, reporting about a new safety system at a regional airport near me, wrote what I think is a pretty well written and succinct article explaining the system and what it could mean should an accident happen at the airport.
But then she throws in two quotes from people in the area (no doubt to give her article a little feeling) and this was one of them.
""It sounds like a good idea but at the same time I don’t know if the plane could hit and maybe the nose could hit the ground and the whole thing could explode," commented Dallas resident Tom Rechtin."
The other quote she threw in was actually pretty good. The person remarked how the system sounded good and was all for increasing the safety of the airport. But then this guy, out of nowhere and having no engineering experience, just says out of the blue that he hopes the system wouldn’t make a plane completely explode.
Sometimes in articles such as this reporters will try to throw in two contradicting opinions in order to give the piece some balance. This makes complete sense, of course, when the two opinions make sense or are from people that have some sort of experience with what the piece is dealing with.
Sarah, all I’m saying is that I think you could have found a better quote. In fact, here’s one for you from me, Colin Devroe, on what I think of the new system having not seen it and having zero experience in aviation and the airport industry as a whole beyond flying on a few planes.
"If the system cost ten times as much and only saved one life, it’d still be worth it."
If you’re going to quote morons, it might as well be this moron. Now I think I’m going to dig up a few other articles she’s written. If only the site made that easy.
