In the age of rabid social media ghosting, hating and canceling, I have an opinion about something that will likely be unpopular to many because the webscape has become so eager to feel self-righteous, particularly when they can call you cruel and unfeeling about the dead.

My opinion is this: Jenny Blalock, who ran the YouTube channel TNFlygirl, wasn’t just a bad pilot: she was an idiot who had no business in an airplane. On a seemingly routine flight in good weather and in an airworthy airplane, Jenny managed to fly into the ground, killing herself and her passenger, her father.

The tradition on YouTube when talking about the dead is to fall over yourself reminding us that these poor people are gone and their families are suffering, and while it’s true, it’s pandering to social media haters who are looking for anything to make them feel smart while making you look stupid, and the whole process is drowning in pettiness and self-indulgence, not real concern for anyone. You have to say “tragic” every third sentence or you are a douchebag, according to social canon.

Anyone who is really concerned about their fellow human beings would never lift a finger to make anyone look or feel bad.

So, back to Blalock. The public opinion of her is carefully concealed, but the anonymous opinion of her is unambiguous. This is from reddit…

She checked every box on the ‘Don’t Be Like This Person’ checklist, and a prime example of ‘Not Everyone Can Be A Pilot’

• 200 hours to get her private (NTSB report)
• Immediately bought a HP/Complex airplane when she could barely handle a trainer (NTSB report)
• Zero spatial awareness (video proof of this)
• Zero understanding of how her aircraft systems worked (video proof of this)
• Zero self-awareness that she shouldn’t be operating an aircraft
• Total reliance on Autopilot and “Head Down in the iPad” flying (NTSB report)
• Posted everything online, attempting to be “an influencer” (video proof of this)

It is the Perfect Storm. It is getting a lot more attention than many other GA crashes because:

1. Tons of video evidence (she posted) of her inadequacies as a pilot
2. “She was pretty” [Editor’s note: I don’t agree with this one.]
3. She took her equally clueless father down with her, who was ‘helping out’. (My father isn’t a pilot, knows nothing about flying, and if I flew my plane half as bad as she did he’d cut it in half with a chainsaw)
4. Damning testimony from CFIs that flew with her
5. NTSB report revealed she was on No-No Drugs and shouldn’t even have had a Medical. So she lied about that also.

Everything I posted above has made everyone’s blood boil as it was happening.

Once again, not everyone has The Right Stuff.

According to the NTSB report, Blalock was taking buspirone, trazodone, propranolol, alprazolam (Xanax), and fexofenadine. Holy shift, pilots. She had a lot of problems and was taking a lot of drugs, many of which were “no fly” medications. You can hear it in her voice and her meter.

And yes, I am aware stories like the “Mushroom Pilot,” and many others who concealed their emotional, mental, and substance-abuse issues from the FAA because they felt certain that honesty about them would have ended their careers in aviation. I have a third class aviation medical certificate, and while I don’t have any issues, I can tell you that on the form you fill out for your medical, you answer “no” to all kinds of questions, no matter the real answer. “Have you even experienced depression or other mental difficulties” is always answered with “no,” whether the real answer is yes or no.

It’s also quite amazing that Blalock found a Designated Pilot Examiner who would sign her off as a new pilot.

So, sure, the system is broken, but this issue goes deeper, to one of self-awareness and self-examination. We need to look hard in the mirror, and not just at ourselves and our special projects, but all the time. Am I ready to become a pilot, and I ready to take this job, am I ready to have children?

Oh, yeah, that last one might be the most important. How many people do you know who have basically failed at being parents, and how many people do you know who have serious difficulty because their parents were bad parents?