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Investigating the pilots of flight 188

by Todd Mundt

WNYC’s The Takeaway got airline expert Patrick Smith on the line yesterday to talk about the (once sleeping, now computer surfing) Northwest Airlines pilots, who overflew the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport last week.

the_takeawayThe author of Ask the Pilot and an online column at Salon.com scolds the media for its microscopic examination of what Smith calls a “freak accident.” He says a much more productive conversation would be about pilot fatigue, a debate that everyone dropped once it was clear the pilots weren’t sleeping.

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  • bcollinsmn
    One of the problem of covering aviation is we have to put up with the I-know-more-than-you-do airline pilots who can't comprehend that SOME people in the media ARE pilots, do know aviation, and know a wrong when they see it.

    The fact of the matter is the airline unions and disgruntled airline pilots pushed the "they were sleeping" meme even when there was -- and still is -- no evidence of that. Why? Because it's an issue they want the media to focus on, it confirms their agenda, even if it it turns out it's not an issue here.

    I'm a pilot, I know aviation and I make no -- absolutely no -- apologies for my work. This pilot is wrong, dead wrong. And he knows it. He knows that the #1 rule -- whether it's an emergency or a routine flight -- of aviating is "fly the airplane." He cannot now turn around and saying pilots who don't aren't a story. They ARE a story. That's not to say that his particularly beef with his profession isn't, of course.

    Distracted pilots kill people. You could ask Paul Wellstone and his family if they weren't dead because of a -- wait for it -- distracted pilot.

    I also think that the issue of the military response to failing to launch any sort of effort to assist (no, not shoot down) in this suggests that things really haven't changed in the coordination between FAA and military since 9/11.

    In any event, we in the media who know what we're doing don't need Patrick Smith to scold us. We need him and his cohorts to do what they're supposed to: Fly the airplane.
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