Tuesday, 27 October 2009
What would Sullenberger have to say about the two Wayward Airline Pilots?
By now most of you have seen on all the news channels the little ditty about the two pilots bound for Minnesota who overflew their destination by 150 miles. Initially everyone said they fell asleep, but as it turns out they were learning a new scheduling system the airline they work for had put in place.
Personally, I've been to Minneapolis and I probably would have overflown too... but anyway, So focused were they on their laptops and the new system that they missed the destination, didn't hear repeated calls thru communications systems and they didn't hear the chimes from the text message system. At least that's the story they told the Federal investigators.
Seems to me that should be easy enough to verify, just check their laptop's logs and/or the logs on the schedule system. If they are telling the truth then there is a decision to make.
The decision is basically this... are you really gonna fire two guys who have 20 plus years of experience in commercial aviation? Are you really gonna suspend or revoke their commercial flying licenses? Does it count in their favor that Both pilots told the NTSB that they had never had an accident, incident or violation? What would Chesley Sullenberger recommend for our schedule challenged aviators?
While I'm not certain what Sullenberger would have to say, I would hope that they don't get fired. I realize that their laptop scheduling faux pas gave everyone a scare, but is it worth trashing an otherwise exemplary career? I think instead they should be given a 1 month suspension without pay and mandated to attend classes on utilizing the new scheduling system, because I just can't see the wisdom in firing two people with so much experience.
This does a couple things, it keeps two hard working and experienced pilots employed and the company still gets the benefit of their experience.
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