Tweet! Personal Foul! Illegal Pronoun Use! Penalty: Three Flight’s Revenue!

U.S. Department of Transportation fines Mercy Flight of Oregon $30,000 for referring to a helicopter technically owned by another company as “our” helicopter.

They can fine a company for using a pronoun inappropriately, yet they can’t mandate that the helicopter EMS industry impose stricter flight safety standards? How effed up is that?

Because, you know, it’s not like the helicopter EMS industry is real serious about implementing better safety standards, despite the fact that medical helicopters fall out of the sky with only slightly less frequency than fall leaves in a windstorm.

I have an idea, though. A $30k fine for a three-letter word… that’s $10k per letter.

Hey, DOT! Why not fine the agencies who refuse to implement those voluntary NTSB standards, for using other inappropriate words in their advertising? $10k per letter adds up pretty quick!

That’s $40,000 for safe.

You could gig ’em for $90,000 for every use of the word necessary.

Lifesaving would be worth a hundred grand!

Heck, appropriate nets a whopping $110,000 fine!

You could really rack up if you fined them every time mechanism of injury appeared in their transport criteria. That’s $170,000 per instance, DOT!

No, I’m not counting the spaces. Let’s not get greedy here, guys.

Browse by Category