May 8, 2020
In conjunction with the daily 7PM clang for the COVID-19 workers, JetBlue criss-crossed NYC yesterday evening with 3 specially painted airplanes to honor them. One each for NYPD and FDNY and one for EMS. Just kidding. It’s kind of amazing how far over backwards public officials will bend to avoid citing EMS by name (unless an EMT or Paramedic gets in trouble for something). EMS transported thousands of COVID-19 patients to hospitals every day for a month and a half and pronounced thousands more in their homes. They were handling 6000 calls a day for weeks, double the normal volume.
FDNY Tribute airplane.
After 9/11 it was ‘police, fire, and first responders.’ This time around, it’s ‘police, fire, and frontline workers.” Granted, the front line includes doctors, nurses, and anyone who works in a hospital in any capacity during this nightmare. And NYPD has lost many officers to the virus. But Fire? And how about that 3rd jet? It got an ‘I Heart NY‘ paint job to honor the Empire State Development agency, of all things. Because giving tax breaks to Amazon (or possibly JetBlue?) is totally front line – or maybe bottom line – work?
NYPD airplane tribute.
Dozens of masked people enjoying a socially distant afternoon stroll in the park near Indian Road barely looked up as the colorful jets flew overhead. The planes weren’t even flying that low, frankly (two thousand feet, according to NotifyNYC). And except for the fact that there haven’t been very many flights overhead at all lately, they seemed pretty ordinary altitude and speed wise. Coming so soon after the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds raced across our sky last week at just fifteen hundred feet, this trio never had a chance to impress.
Maybe this was the EMS tribute plane?
