Hello my fellow aviators and beloved mechanics!  I am a veteran flight instructor and aircraft mechanic of over 30 years.  It has been one of my greatest honors to train the next generation of pilots!  Join me on my last flight.  A flight above the clouds.  One with the moonlight shining off the wings.  One that I will not likely survive.

My background is that of joining the US Marine Corps at the age of 17 to become a pilot.  Going from the enlisted ranks to officer.  Only to be relieved of duty during the downsizing after Russia collapsed, and the Berlin Wall was torn down.  I then transferred into the US Coast Guard as a Special Agent in the reserves for 14 years.  My full time job was that of a Special Agent in the Department of Defense.  Protecting our Top Secret military programs from espionage.  Then I transferred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as a Special Investigator doing backgrounds and internal affairs. 

At the same time I began to fly.  Purchasing an old 1956 Cessna 172 with a pull starter from a Ford tractor.  Instead of yelling “Clear Prop” I could be heard saying “Clear Hay!”  Yes, from the beginning everyone on the airport thought I was weird.  This opinion has not changed.  Rather it has been confirmed over and over again!  As I slowly built a flight school I learned the value of fellow pilots and mechanics.  Some of the best people I ever met were at the airport.  After work I could not wait to go out to the airport!  It was where I belonged.

When I started aviation the airport was a magical place!  You could help wash an airplane.  Then a grumpy old fart would fly you to another airport for a hamburger.  The airports were filled with World War II veterans.  Veterans that had gone through the Great Depression.  Fought a vicious and brutal war for our future.  Watched their friends perishing before their time.  Instead of bitterness and anger these men chose kindness and respect.  They did not look down on the new kids coming to the airport.  They actually welcomed us!  Teaching us how to fly.  I remember one of them yelling at me “Get your head outside the cockpit!  Those instruments won’t save you!  You wanna get shot down you numbskull?”  Then there were the mechanics.  Always having a loose screw.  Always  dropping their nuts on the ground!  Even when we swept the floor of the maintenance hanger we could not find their nuts!  Where does a man’s nuts go to after all?

Truly, this was the end of the golden age of General Aviation.  I was lucky enough to have been a part of it.  Over the years I have watched the many forces coming together to destroy American aviation.  From the many recessions, wars, and rising costs.  However, what threatens aviation the most is the enemy within.  From the local city and county governments seeking to remove their local airports.  To the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) filled with corruption and malice against the aviation community.  

There just seems to be no hope to make things better.  With the tragic accident in 2019 my personal friend, a Captain Jerome Renck, was falsely accused of being a reckless pilot that killed ten people.  With this falsified accident report the FAA embraced a new policy of going after CFI’s.  Personally attacking me.  Starting an illegal and unfounded investigations to prove my guilt somehow in this terrible accident.  During this process of facing illegal conduct by the FAA and NTSB I look to my past.  I have fallen back on my training as a federal law enforcement officer.  Going through the chain of command at the FAA and NTSB.  Using the resources and training available to me.  Only to find yet another layer of corruption.  More illegal conduct.  Exposing a system that most all pilots and aircraft mechanics never see.  Nor have the ability to protect themselves from.  We pilots and mechanics just do not have the skill sets to deal with such malice.

Having twenty years of federal law enforcement I have seen corruption, lawlessness, and especially malice.  Fighting for our rights as American aviators and mechanics will be my last flight.  It has not been a pleasant flight at all.   I do not even get to have a trusty First Officer with me.  Regardless, your rights to have a career in aviation matter.  Your lives matter.  The lives of our passengers matter.  The lives of those that just happen to be beneath one of our malfunctioning planes matter.  OUR LIVES MATTER!

Please join me on this flight!  No flight planning conducted.  No set course to fly.  Not even a preflight done.  Nor even a run-up completed!  Witness the most certain death of an American flight instructor.  A flight instructor wondering how much could be changed….if only we tried.

God Bless!  Keep Flying Speed!

Captain Robert “That Guy” Riter