LUZERNE COUNTY -- “Overall it's just a tragic situation.”
Jim Gallagher and his brother Michael are the owners and operators of Aviation Technologies Incorporated, a private airport at the Wilkes-Barre Scranton International Airport.
They say the news of the German airline crash in the French Alps was tragic enough; now hearing the co-pilot reportedly deliberately crashed the plane is extremely upsetting.
“A pilot's goal is to perform a service, whether it's for business or pleasure and their goal is to get up and get down and to move passengers in a safe manner,” said Michael Gallagher.
“I think this is a tragic, off-occurrence, it`s a tragedy that it happened for the families lost their loved ones, we'll probably never know exactly why,” said Jim Gallagher.
The Gallaghers say this should be seen as an extreme and isolated incident and people should not be afraid to fly.
“The FAA, the United States has a very safe protocol in place, procedures, redundancy in place to prevent this, although you can never prevent an individual from acting out an act of violence so to speak, but our measures of safety in place are very important to us and even as part of the pilot training that we offer here at Aviation Technologies,” said Jim.
For passengers flying out of the Wilkes-Barre Scranton International Airport, they say they're not afraid either.
“This is an incident that is so few and far between that, no, it doesn't concern me to fly at all,” said Lee Clark, who was flying home to Tampa. “Think about how many planes are in the sky, it's still the safest way to travel, as far as I'm concerned.”
