This is a real classy guy. Sounds like he would let anybody do whatever they want to his airplane.
I agree with John Collins. I had three kids running on my 6A wing while the parents stood by and watched. My conversation with them was not pretty.
I also quit going to fly in's. It's not worth the agravation and worry.
I do not totally agree with "Uhhuh35" but do not think it is fair to say that he would have no concerns about this himself.
It is a touchy issue to be sure. The fly-ins we attend need to be treated like car shows. How many car shows have you attended where people were allowed to crawl all over that pristine 1962 corvette? Not only do the car show organizers and car owners take precautions to keep it from occurring I would also say the general public recognizes that these are special machines that need to be treated with respect.
I think the reality is that we need to
educate, educate, educate. I would lay no blame on a child for doing something inappropriate if that child had not been instructed to behave but I would be likely to come unglued on the parent for allowing their child to do so as I believe it should be the parents duty and responsibility to educate that child. I guess the reality is we cannot assume that someone has educated that parent on proper behavior in these situations.
I am sorry if my ideas offend anyone but the reality is
it does take a village to raise a child. Sadly though our society does not accept the notion that someone outside the immediate family of a child can discipline that child. In my opinion we have a generation of adults who are now parents that never had to accept authority figures outside of their family and in some cases they really never had to accept any authority even within their own family. In fact, we now live in a society that views authority figures as negative influences in our lives and should be rebelled against whenever possible.
For those of you who have children, I would ask you to answer these questions as honestly as you can. Have you ever had someone outside your immediate family discipline your child? How did you react to that once you found out they had done so? Did you see it as a positive or negative incident? These are some of the issues associated with why we face these kinds of problems.
Adults should have enough sense to know the importance of not messing with other people's property. If they do not then I think they should be made aware of how rude, inappropriate and in some instances, down right dangerous it is for them to be touching, poking and prodding our machines in no uncertain terms.
I currently own a tube and fabric aircraft that I have flown to several fly-ins that allowed the general public to roam around the aircraft. I have had adults push the airplane around grabbing a control surface and tugging the airplane. I have had someone take a finger and poke the fabric to the point where if they had a sharp fingernail they could have poked a hole through the fabric. It is irritating that the adults who come to these
"airplane shows" are unwilling to conform to a sense of appropriate behavior around these special machines.
The way I see it, I have to become a very diligent guard constantly watching out for my aircraft whenever it is around the non-flying public. I have never flown into Oshkosh but would like to some day. However, I have mixed feelings about doing so as I have observed some people doing some ridiculously stupid things around some of those aircraft at Oshkosh. Sometimes it truly does amaze me that individuals in our society today have such little respect for other's property.
Well, sorry for my long winded rant. I will continue to educate any non-flying adults I can about these issues whenever possible. Hopefully, one at a time, I can do some good for the next time that individual is around other aircraft.