Those Scary Cessnas?

The teenager who flew a stolen Cessna 172 into a Tampa office building last year sought out detailed information about MacDill Air Force base shortly before the fatal flight, according to a new FBI report quoted in the Tampa Tribune last week. A week before he committed suicide, Charles Bishop, 15, emailed a classmate to ask if he knew the location of Central Command at MacDill, the Tribune reported, and also searched the Internet for maps of the base. The NTSB reported that Bishop’s plane buzzed the control tower at MacDill and flew within 100 feet of two parked KC-135 tanker aircraft loaded with jet fuel. Whether the FBI report will serve to worry the military (or the public) about the perceived potential dangers of small aircraft remains to be seen. Bishop’s family has filed a $70 million lawsuit against makers of the acne drug Accutane. The drug company says there is no link between its drug and suicide.