Really
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 A Northwest flight crew overflew their destination by 150 miles recently. Rampant speculation in the first reports were that they had fallen asleep at the wheel from possible overwork. It turns out they were so engaged with their laptops that they lost all track of time and responsibility. Really. Several hundred people on board and you decide it's more important to check out a scheduling system and lose all track of what's really important. Like landing! Because you really have no choice but to come down!
Downtown Petaluma, 2009I travel over a 100,000 miles a year and stories like this are getting disturbing. We've got enough of an issue throughout society in the all important things that we call ourselves. But at some point the selfish behavior needs to stop. Like when peoples lives could possibly be on the line and a careless disregard of the rules leads to gross negligence.
Reports say that these pilots had unblemished records and no safety issues had ever been recorded. That may be true. But it would have been a real tragedy if they had flown into another aircraft, a building or something else. Would it have been possible for them to run out of fuel altogether? The mind spins at the possibilities.
This photograph has nothing to do with this post. It's a building in Petaluma and I'm a sucker for the old and tired looking places. This is an old grain building that's been turned into something else but I thought it was graphic and looked good. So sue me. And forgive me for a blatant rip-off of Saturday Night Live although, I have used that expression long before I saw the skits.
