Yellville, Give It A Rest

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While I genuinely appreciate the job FAA inspectors do, I rarely feel much empathy for them. But imagining what the inspector had to go through to witness the Yellville turkey drop, I’m empathetic to the point of tears. I’m sure you read the story, but if you didn’t, here it is. The upshot is that some folks in Yellville, Arkansas, think it’s a good idea to drop live turkeys out of Cessnas as part of the holiday festivities leading to Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Lacking any regulatory authority to do otherwise, since the drop doesn’t endanger anyone in the air or on the ground, the FAA had no objections to it. That’s the right decision, by the way, because the FAA has no jurisdiction in animal rights, nor would we want it to. Nor does it have any authority over the exercise of criminal stupidity. Again, as citizens in good standing, we’re all free to partake in the dumbest things we can possibly think of. And the turkey drop is that, in my estimation.

Without even getting into how this tarnishes the image of people who fly small airplanes, let’s consider the larger issue: This is simply cruelty to animals little different than cockfighting, kicking dogs for the fun of it or terrorizing cats. Turkeys aren’t accustomed to being heaved out of flying airplanes and they aren’t particularly adept flyers either, so the Yellville project managed to kill a couple of them simply through the act of heaving them out the door. Yes, the turkeys will end up on someone’s dinner table anyway, but in the commercial poultry business, slaughtering them is far more humane that letting 30 seconds of gravity end a terrified bird’s life.

So forget pilots being involved in the act. This is basic decent human behavior. Civilized society demands that we don’t torture animals for mere entertainment. So Yellville, how about we let this year’s turkey drop be the last. Maybe take up pumpkin chunking instead.

CORRECTION: Lynn Lunsford contacted me to point out that he is not an inspector, as the blog said, but is an FAA public affairs officer. An inspector was sent to the event but found that the drop represented no hazard. The inspector determined that the drops were occurring where the pilot said they would and found no basis for enforcement.

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