Pilot Failure

If you think those cell phone addicted drivers who text and chat on their phones are bad news on the highways, how about the latest technology intrusion that has surfaced, not on the roads, but in air travel? It's the lap top pilot. According to U.S. federal airline regulators, two Northwest Airline pilots used laptop computers in the cockpit while in flight and didn't pay attention to their duties as they flew past their Minneapolis destination last week. They flew more than 125 kilometers past Minneapolis airport before a stewardess finally told them they had flown too far. The two pilots on that flight later told investigators that they flew for 78 minutes without speaking to controllers because they became so engrossed in a new computer program that arranges pilot schedules. Haha Well....at least they weren't on a chat line or cruising porn sites. Or were they????

To ignore contact with air controllers and fly blindly is not only negligence but is gross incompetence. I doubt any airline will ever let those two fly again and the Federal Aviation Administration may pull their licenses permanently. One would think the safety of the passengers and crew would take precedence over using a computer while in the sky. But even common sense is lost to allure of technology these days. Flying while ignoring the flight progress while instead playing on a computer is like doing a high dive into a river before checking the depth and clearance of the water.

If the technology explanation given is true and explains why the pilots lost touch (there are endless others reason they may have lost contact besides the one given by Northwest Airlines that Northwest might feel had to be hidden from the public), I wonder how many other pilots are playing with technology unrelated to their flight and what else is going on in the cockpit. How safe are passengers? And are the airlines aware of this and hiding the problem from the public?

It used to be stories about drunk pilots were the ones that frightened passengers, but strict rules about drinking before flights were and are strictly enforced some time ago, and that is no longer a problem of any magnitude.Finally, what else threatening safety goes on in the cockpit that we don't know about? On top of many new fees airlines are imposing, delays at airports, silly security checks, cramped flights and canceled or late flights, this latest airline problem surely does not motivate many to fly.