Arguing pilots fly 150 miles past runway

[JoeRedskin]

For what it's worth, when my Dad, a pilot, retired from the Air Force, he apparently had opportunities to fly for a number of airlines. Many, many years later I asked him why he didn't do this. His response was, essentially, "because I didn't want to be an glorified bus driver, I'd be bored to tears" and that was with the technology they had in the 70's.

I'm inclined to go with Angry on this one. While distracted, I imagine that, if a problem with the actual flight of the plane occurred, they probably would have become "undistracted" quickly enough. I don't mean "oh god the engines are out" but more of "hey, did the engine just sound funny? we better check it out" .

I have worked with dangerous machines many times in my life. After pushing the 50th peice of wood through a saw that will take your hand off in a second, you may begin to drift but you still be aware of the danger at some level and be ready to take appropriate action.

[saden1]

If the plane didn't crash it's all good. Everyone on-board deserves a free glorified-bus ticket though.

[Hog1]

They ARE glorified bus drivers. PLEASE...no sleeping on the job

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by SmootSmack

I'm no pilot, but I'm not sure how you compare missing an exit on a highway with missing a runway

Well at first I was going to say they probably have a GPS system in the plane but after a quick search I'm not so sure.

Airlines which APPROVE/DISPROVE GPS use in Flight

[FRPLG]

Originally Posted by Angry

It is not more dangerous, don't you read those statistics where it is safer to fly than drive? I understand that in a car crash you could die, while in a plane crash you probably will die.

Perhaps I should have said that the consequences are greater. The difference is that not paying attention and missing an exit causes no one harm. This type of inattention arguably is harmless in general. Losing track of what you are doing while flying an airplane, while similar in type and consequence in this case, is simply a much worse indicator for the abilities of the pilot. When flying a plane with hundreds of people on board if you can't pay attention enough to know when to land the plane then I am pretty damned worried about you being a pilot. That's a rather large thing to miss. We're not talking about taxiing to the wrong gate here. They forgot to land the plane.

No they don't, not for a long time anyway.
WikiAnswers - How much money does an airline pilot earn

That's not peanuts.

Regardless, you are expecting somebody to be as diligent at doing something their 451st time as they were on ther 1st. It just doesn't work that way. Human nature doesn't work that way. You can preach on and on about money, severity, danger, ect. until you are blue in the face. That does not change the fact that you are human, will get complacent, and eventually will make a mistake.

Look I buy your rationale about human nature. But in this type of case it doesn't apply. If it did we'd hear about this happening more often. I haven't heard of it before. That leads me to believe that most pilots don't EVER have a problem remembering to land the plane at the appropriate time.

[KLHJ2]

Fair enough.

I would venture to say, though I do not know for sure, that instances like this probably do happen more often than we hear about (for shorter distances). Its possible that the only reason that we had heard about this one was due to the distance that they flew off course.

Did you read the entire link on pilot salaries? If were a pilot right now at my age and experience in my current field I would only be making about 1/3 of what I make right now. I wouldn't be able to catch up to a competative salary until my 40's or 50's. In your defense though you are right, most major Airline pilots are the more experienced guys. I wonder how much of a cut the pilots are having to take due to the poor industry right now though.

[saden1]

This isn't a big deal, I'm pretty sure every weather related delay isn't weather related. Shit happens.

Pilots use to make 200K+ back in the day (before 1999) but then industry got saturate with too many pilots, and then the recession and 911 happened. Pilot salaries haven't recovered since.