Breaking the rules can have immediate consequences

It broke my heart reading about the tragedy at Castle Airport outside of Merced, California that occured nearly a year ago. It brought back a realization that life is fragile and, sometimes, is thrown away for no reason.

A quick re-cap. Two students of the flight school flew together illegally and against the school's policy on what was supposed to be a solo flight. Upon returning, 26 year old Wei Jin exited the plane and, while attempting to remain unseen by fuel truck personnel, walked right into the still spinning propeller. Unfortunately, he did not survive.

How, you might ask, do two students get themselves in this situation? Neither meant for anything bad to happen, but they set out on that trip knowing they were breaking the law and the school's rule. There's a reason these rules are made. At that point in training, a student is barely able to handle flying the plane by themselves; add in the inherent bad attitudes when trying to impress friends, the complacensy some students fall in to and the pressure of knowingly commiting a crime and you have a recipe for disaster.

I have no clue what the authorities were thinking when they made up these rules, but had these two followed the rule, Wei Jin would might still be alive. Many students feel the pressure to fly their friends. I even wanted to fly a few friends when I started soloing, but I realized that I wasn't ready to handle such a situation. Since then, I've heard a few other stories of would-be pilots breaking the rules: all of them had immediate consequences.  The one below illustrates how, even if nothing bad happens, there are still consequences.

A recently approved cross-country solo student took his girlfriend along on a training trip. Upon returning, two CFIs at the school brought to his attention the FARs he'd violated. Instead of reporting the incident, the CFI's and student made an arrangement where he'd take extra training under the CFIs. When authorities found out, the CFI's lost their right to fly along with the student for conspiracy to cover up an incident.

I know that seems a bit harsh, but look at it from the authorities' point of view. The CFIs get paid for that 'extra training', so it's sort of like they profitted from not reporting the incident.  Will they try to profit from any other incidents in the future that could produce dangerous pilots? Secondly, that student demonstrated that he could and would knowingly violate a FAR; what happens in the future when he's, say, not equipped for Class B airspace and decides to switch off his transponder and fly through it anyway?

The line from that old song "I fought the law and the law won" rings truer today than any time in the past, so remember, know your FARs and don't break them.