The panic attacks seem to be getting more frequent, more intense and uncontrollable. The hyperventilation, the palpitations, the sweats - I could care less about them. It’s the other reflexive reactions the public exhibits toward perceived airborne danger I worry about: the hasty evacuations of state and federal buildings; the White House lock downs; the traumatic shock triggered by news that taxes are spent on airports serving small planes; the misguided calls for action from uninformed politicians made in the reflected glare of tragedy.

Sure, I fear what this portends for the future of general aviation; fret over America’s lost love for aviators and aviation. But think of them, the knee-jerk. Have compassion. Feel the fear that is their constant companion. Imagine yourself, like them, the human version of a fuzzy scurrying herbivore from some Disney nature film, ever stopping to scan the sky for airborne danger. Consider the angst the members of this bizarre reverse cargo cult live with. The South Pacific natives who initiated those cults believed the airplane-shaped decoys they built in jungle clearings would lure the giant flying creatures they saw overhead down from the sky, where they could seize the precious cargo of manufactured goods. And we thought they were crazy. Even they recognized aviation brings benefits. What to make of educated people who act as if possessed by the belief a small aircraft will fall from the sky and smote them, leaving their feet protruding from under a pancaked Bonanza like the Wicked Witch of the East’s from beneath Dorothy’s house in the Wizard of Oz?

Nowhere did the knee-jerk put on a greater show of unity and stupidity than in the wake of last August’s tragic mid-air collision that occurred either within or just above the Hudson River Exclusion area, AKA the Hudson Corridor, adjacent to New York City. A Piper PA-32 Archer flying at an altitude of approximately 1,100 feet with three people aboard collided with a Eurocopter AS350 sightseeing helicopter carrying a pilot and five tourists from Italy. All nine died. The mishap called for grieving, a search for answers, for reassuring people that despite this terrible aberration, the sky is not falling. Instead, the leaders who traditionally provide that solace and calm were leading the panic attack.

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