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Tag: John Cox

  • This Virginia man is preparing to run his 40th Marine Corps Marathon – WTOP News

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    John Cox has pretty much seen it all during the running of the Marine Corps Marathon in D.C. over the past 39 years. This year will be his 40th straight race.

    The 50th Marine Corps Marathon is less than a month away, and WTOP is highlighting some of the inspiring people getting ready to take part in what’s known as “The People’s Marathon.”

    On Monday, WTOP spoke to a nurse who’s chosen to run the 26.2-mile distance for the first time. But this Virginia man is preparing to run it for the 40th time.

    “I’ve run it in rain, I’ve run it in wind, I’ve run it with Oprah,” John Cox told WTOP while sitting at the Caboose Brewing Company & Tavern in Vienna, Virginia.

    Cox has pretty much seen it all during the running of the Marine Corps Marathon over the past 39 years.

    He started in 1986, running it with his father who was a Marine veteran of World War II and fought in Okinawa. He was a law student at the University of Virginia at the time.

    John Cox (right) runs the Marine Corps Marathon in D.C. with his father on Nov. 3, 1991.

    “It’s funny because that year, when I ran in ’86, my dad was as old as I am now. So he ran his first one at 62 with me,” he said.

    The race is a family tradition. Cox’s father and mother would come down for the race every year and stay at a hotel in Arlington. Since that first year, Cox has run with his father, brother, sister and his two daughters. One of his daughters qualified for the Boston Marathon when she was a teenager.

    “But overall, I think our family has well over 115 (entries), maybe even higher,” he said. “It’s tradition for me. It’s feels like it’s more like a cleansing experience. When you finish it, you feel like you’ve accomplished something.”

    He has seen the race grow from a few thousand runners to now over 40,000. He has also seen the course and preparations for the race change.

    “When they had the D.C. sniper, that was scary only because the sniper had been shooting in Maryland and been shooting in D.C. and been shooting in Virginia, and you just didn’t know,” he said. “They definitely amped up security.”

    He also ran just a few weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon, describing the massive hole he and other runners saw as they passed by.

    Over his 39 races, the conditions have varied dramatically. He’s run in snow, heat, humidity, hurricane-force winds and even gruesome injuries.

    “I stepped on a nail and it went into my foot. And I’m sitting there, and I’m like, ‘Oh, this hurts. This hurts a lot,’ but I couldn’t bend down to do anything, so I had to ask a spectator, ‘Hey, can you please take this nail out of my foot?’” Cox said with a laugh.

    One of the worst races he participated in on the streets of D.C. was in 2023, when the heat reached the upper 70s and the humidity was extreme.

    “The clothes were sticking to me, and then you just started hearing sirens, and people were collapsing. They were running out of water, and they started closing the course because they didn’t have enough medical personnel,” Cox said. “It was the right choice.”

    Though each one represents a “cleansing experience” for him, there are just too many medals to hang. Instead, he keeps his 39 medals in a shoe box. He said his favorite thing to do while he’s running the course is to spot a familiar face.

    “I always try to see one person that I recognize from just life in general,” Cox said. “That makes my marathon experience.”

    His advice to newer runners is to not “go crazy on the first hill, you’ve got 24 miles after that.”

    “That first hill can break you. And if you’re at all concerned about it, I would conserve your energy there, knowing that you have a long downhill and then just let the crowd take you,” Cox said.

    While his streak may one day break, it won’t be this year. He said he never takes the opportunity to run the race for granted.

    “It’s well supported, and it’s a privilege to run with the Marines,” he said.

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    Luke Lukert

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  • A Southwest jet that did a ‘Dutch roll’ was parked outside during severe storm

    A Southwest jet that did a ‘Dutch roll’ was parked outside during severe storm

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    DALLAS (AP) — Investigators say a Southwest Airlines jet that experienced an unusual “Dutch roll” in flight had been parked outside during a strong storm and then underwent routine maintenance, after which pilots noticed odd movements of the rudder pedals.

    After the May 25 incident, Southwest mechanics found “substantial” damage in the aircraft’s tail, where the rudder is located, but the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday that it hasn’t determined when the damage occurred.

    The plane, a Boeing 737 Max, was grounded for more than a month but resumed flights last week, according to data from Flightradar24.com.

    Dutch roll is a swaying, rhythmic combination of yaw, or the tail sliding sideways, and the wingtips rocking up and down. The Southwest jet experienced the movement at 34,000 feet and again after descending to 32,000 feet while flying from Phoenix to Oakland, California.

    The condition can be dangerous, and modern planes have a “yaw damper” to stop the oscillations that characterize Dutch roll.

    After the plane landed, Southwest mechanics found fractures in the metal bracket and ribs that hold a backup power control unit to the rudder system. Investigators examined the damaged parts last week in Ogden, Utah.

    The NTSB said the plane was parked overnight at the New Orleans airport on May 16 during thunderstorms that packed gusting winds up to 84 mph, heavy rain and a tornado watch.

    On May 23, the plane underwent scheduled maintenance, and afterward pilots noticed the rudder pedals moving when the yaw damper was engaged. Pilots on the May 25 flight felt the pedals moving during the Dutch roll and even after landing, the NTSB said.

    John Cox, a former airline pilot and now a safety consultant, said the NTSB preliminary report indicates that the plane was most likely damaged during the storm. He said the near hurricane-force winds could have caused the rudder on the parked jet to slam back and forth.

    Cox said there was “absolutely no way in the world” the Dutch roll caused such severe damage, nor does he think it was related to the maintenance work.

    “I do not see this as a Max issue. I do not see this right now as a 737 issue,” he said. “I see this as a one-off.”

    Southwest inspected its 231 Max jets last month and found no other cases of damage around the rudder power units and no problems in new planes it has received since, according to the NTSB.

    Dallas-based Southwest declined to comment.

    It could be a year or longer before the NTSB determines a probable cause for the incident.

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  • Report: No altitude advice before Dallas air show crash

    Report: No altitude advice before Dallas air show crash

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    DALLAS — Just before a midair collision that killed six at a Dallas air show, a group of historic fighter planes was told to fly ahead of a formation of bombers without any prior plan for coordinating altitude, according to a federal report released Wednesday. The report did not give a cause of the crash.

    A P-63 Kingcobra fighter was banking left when it struck a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber behind the left wing during the Nov. 12 air show featuring World War II-era planes, the National Transportation Safety Board said in its preliminary findings. All six people aboard the planes — the pilot of the fighter and the bomber’s pilot, co-pilot and three crew members — died as both aircraft broke apart in flight, with the bomber catching fire and then exploding on impact.

    There had been no coordination of altitudes in briefings before the flight or while the planes were in the air, the NTSB said. The report said that the Kingcobra was the third in a formation of three fighters and the B-17 was the lead of a five-ship bomber formation.

    Eric Weiss, an NTSB spokesperson, said the agency is trying to determine the sequence of maneuvers that led to the crash. It is also examining whether such air shows normally have altitude deconfliction plans.

    “Those are precisely the types of questions our investigators are asking,” Weiss said. “What was the process? What’s the correct process? And what happened?”

    John Cox, a former airline captain with more than 50 years’ experience, was surprised that the NTSB found there wasn’t an altitude deconfliction brief before or during the flight. He said these take place in other air shows, but he’s not certain whether they’re standard for the Commemorative Air Force, which put on the Wings over Dallas show.

    A person familiar with the show’s operations that day said the air crews were given general altitude direction in their morning pre-show briefing. However, there was not a discussion of specific altitudes for each pass the aircraft were going to perform, said the person, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and did so on condition of anonymity.

    Typically fighters fly above bombers, and when a group is called to make a pass that could put planes at the same or nearly the same altitudes, they maintain a lateral separation from each other, the person said. In general, the person continued, it’s the responsibility of the air boss to set out a plan for maintaining either vertical or lateral separation.

    Wings Over Dallas was the group’s last show of the season, the person said.

    The NTSB said the fighter formation had been told by the air boss to proceed to a line that was 500 feet (152 meters) from where the audience was lined up at Dallas Executive Airport, while the bomber formation was told to fly 1,000 feet (304 meters) from the audience viewing area.

    The NTSB said a navigation device on the bomber “contained position information relevant to the accident” but a device on the fighter didn’t record during the flight.

    The Commemorative Air Force, which put on the show for Veterans Day, said Wednesday that they’re continuing to work with the NTSB and are grateful for that agency’s “diligence in looking into anything that could have been a factor to cause the accident.” The group said they can’t speculate on the crash’s cause.

    The Commemorative Air Force previously identified the victims as: Terry Barker, Craig Hutain, Kevin “K5” Michels, Dan Ragan, Leonard “Len” Root and Curt Rowe.

    All the men were volunteers who had gone through a strict process of logging hours and training flights and were vetted carefully, Hank Coates, CEO of Commemorative Air Force, said after the crash.

    Cox said the planes were flown by experienced pilots and that it’s “virtually certain” the pilot of the smaller, more maneuverable fighter didn’t see the bomber. He said understanding how this happened will be a central challenge for investigators.

    “What happened for two pilots of this skill level to end up in the same airspace at the same time?” said Cox, the founder of Safety Operating Systems, which helps smaller airlines and corporate flight services around the world with safety planning.

    The air show collision came three years after the crash of a bomber in Connecticut that killed seven, and amid ongoing concern about the safety of shows involving older warplanes.

    The B-17, a cornerstone of U.S. air power during World War II, is an immense four-engine bomber that was used in daylight raids against Germany. The Kingcobra, a U.S. fighter, was used mostly by Soviet forces during the war. Most B-17s were scrapped at the end of World War II and only a handful remain today, largely featured at museums and air shows, according to Boeing.

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    Associated Press writer Tara Copp in Washington contributed to this report.

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    Follow AP’s full coverage of plane crashes: https://apnews.com/hub/plane-crashes

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