A pilot (reportedly a flight instructor) pulling a Cessna 172's propeller around by hand (to "free" it, according to the police statement) had his plane's engine start unexpectedly on him today, resulting in his plane heading pilotless across the parking area at my home airport, Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional (CHO).

End result: four aircraft were damaged; two of them appear to be total losses.

This runaway Cessna ("172" in the diagram below) was parked directly across the parking-area taxiway from my own plane, a Mooney 231 ("Jeff" below).

Had the Cessna run away straight across the taxiway, my plane would have been destroyed -- rammed head-on and then chopped to ribbons by the runaway plane's spinning propeller. And had it run away diagonally to its left, it would have rammed my friend's Piper Malibu ("Bart" below) in the tail and then chopped it up.

Lucky for me (and Bart) -- but unlucky for some other folks -- it ran away diagonally to the right.

Its (high) wing appears to have passed directly over my plane's (low) wing -- missing it by only a couple of feet! -- as it headed toward, and then smashed into, a Piper Arrow IV's tail ("Arrow" below). The runaway plane then pivoted to its left and tore into the Arrow with its spinning propeller. Additionally, the runaway Cessna damaged a Piper Cherokee 160 ("160" below) and a Piper Archer ("181" below).

              (totaled) (damaged)
      Bart      Arrow      181
      -----     -----     -----
        |         |         |
   |    |    |    |    |    |    |
   |         |     *   |         |
 -----     -----  /  -----     -----
[vacant]   Jeff  /    160
                /  (damaged)
               /
 - - - - - - -/- - - - - - - - - - - taxiway - -
             /
         (runaway)
            172
 -----     -----     -----     -----
   |         |         |         |
   |         |         |         |

Some pictures:

Cessna, meet Piper.

Cessna 172 embedded in the side of a Piper Arrow. Both aircraft appear to be totaled. The Arrow's fuselage is completely ripped apart. Not visible is the Cessna's right wing, which was partially torn off.

Runaway Cessna's propeller scars in the pavement (foreground bottom). My Mooney 231 is in the background. The rope on the right was tied to the tail of the destroyed Piper Arrow. The runaway Cessna approached from the left side of the picture.

Yellow lines in foreground show destroyed Arrow's parking spot. My Mooney is in the background, as is Bart Bartlett; he's standing next to the tail of his Piper Malibu (far right). The runaway Cessna approached from the left side of the picture.

Damaged cowling and spinner of Piper Cherokee 160.

Damaged Piper Archer in the background, with my Mooney's wing in the foreground. (The tiedown ropes of the destroyed Piper Arrow are visible above and below my Mooney's wing.)

My son cutting the ribbon at the dedication of a new Albemarle County firehouse today.

And, finally, the FAA's preliminary accident report.

Now these are the laws of good Software,
Unwritten and varied they be;
And he who is wise will observe them,
When writing code in script or in C.

As naught may outwit the compiler,
So it is with syntax and its grip,
For the core of programming is syntax,
And the bonds of syntax give the pip.

Take heed what ye pass as directives,
Be your code written simply and plain,
Lest preprocessors choke on the input,
And so ye shall write it again.

If ye labor from morn until even',
And meet with reproof for your toil,
'Tis well that your editor idle;
The compiler--its trousers show soil.

On the strength of all lines in the function,
Dependeth successful return.
Who knows when some misguided caller,
Correct sizing of bufs it will spurn?

When a hacker who's tired returneth,
With some bugs in his code glaring mean;
We debugger new codes for good reason,
Few first passes at coding are clean!
So shall thou, and lest perchance thou grow mired,
In the uttermost parts of the C;
Pray your editor balances braces,
As much and as oft as may be.

Ignore not good documentation
But rather to write it aspire;
Though elder hacks may just use the source
There cometh, perchance, a new hire!

[Inspired by Rear Admiral Ronald A. Hopwood's (C.B., Royal Navy) 1896 masterpiece of naval wisdom. Kipling, please forgive us both.]

So ya
Thought ya
Might like to go build this trove.
To feel the warm thrill of compiling
That space cadet glow.
Tell me is something eluding you, runtime?
Is this not what you expected to see?
If you wanna find out how to build this old code
You'll just have to lick some psychedelic toad!

Build my troves, tonight
Where there's cycles and there's power
And they're fast and alive
Building on your host
I never never want to go slow
Because I haven't got time
Anymore

Build my troves, tonight
Because I want to see commits and I
Want to see clones
Building on your host
Oh, please don't block my job
Because it's not my trove, it's their
Trove, and it's blocking some more

And if a deadlock-causing bug
Crashes into us
To die in rmake
Is such a maddening way to die
And if a ten-job build
Blocks the queue for hours
To pend in rmake
Well, the madness - the frustration is mine

Build my troves, tonight
Build them anywhere, I don't care
I don't care, I don't care
And in the darkened server room
I thought Oh God, my job is built at last?
(But then a strange fear gripped me and I
Just couldn't ask)

Build my troves, tonight
Oh, build them anywhere, I don't care
I don't care, I don't care
Building on your host
I never never want to go slow
Because I haven't got time, da ...
Oh, I haven't got time

And if a deadlock-causing bug
Crashes into us
To die in rmake
Is such a maddening way to die
And if a ten-job build
Blocks the queue for hours
To pend in rmake
Well, the madness - the frustration is mine

Oh, There Is a Trove And It Never Gets Built
There Is a Trove And It Never Gets Built
There Is a Trove And It Never Gets Built
There Is a Trove And It Never Gets Built
There Is a Trove And It Never Gets Built
There Is a Trove And It Never Gets Built
There Is a Trove And It Never Gets Built
There Is a Trove And It Never Gets Built
There Is a Trove And It Never Gets Built

(Morrissey, please forgive me....)

One trove's getting larger
And one trove's getting small
And the ones that Darby gives you
Don't do anything at all
Go ask dugan
When he's ten feet tall

And if you go cooking changesets
And you know you're going to fall
Tell'em a hookah smoking buildmeister
Has given you the call
Recall jforbes
When he was just small

When hosts on the build farm
Go down and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of traceback
And your mind is moving low
Go ask elliot
I think he'll know

When rmake and your group cook
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the change root is talking backwards
And the oot dude's "off with its head!"
Remember what your S.O. said:
"COME TO BED...
COME TO BED!"