Patrick,

Given your sluggish reponse to the events alluded to -- for damn good personal reasons - perhaps you should cut some slack for others who were late in hearing the news.

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and I'd trust a pilot in Congress before I'd trust a Congressman in a cockpit...

Much like the TSA concentrating its efforts on nail clippers rather than the mulititudes of employees with little to no attention paid to that have unhindered airside access, its not surprising that politicians want to ban laptops from the flightdeck. Much easier than actually introducing legislation that would regulate flight time and duty limitations to ensure that pilots were properly rested and attentive to begin with.

Someone once told me that there were more regulations regarding the working hours of truck drivers than there were for pilots and cabin crew. They also told me that there were more regulations regarding the conditions that cattle were flown in, than there were for passengers. (ie. operative air conditioning). I have no reason to doubt either theory.

It's my understanding that it's very common for airline pilots to sleep in the cockpit, although usually they do it in turn and not in concert. Flight attendants are the employees that stay awake and it was likely the flight attendants that alerted the pilots to the fact that they had overshot the landing. It seems the problem is not laptops or distractions, but scheduling and long hours—which still doesn't make it the domain of legislators.

given that the tens of pounds of paper pilots haul around in those big leather cases are migrating to "electronic flight bags," which are basically laptop computers. Those "laptops" have electronic copies of aviation charts and manuals, so they need to be available in flight--that's right--in the cockpit.

Patrick,

Your columns seem to buy into the statement by the pilots that they were engrossed in their laptops, so engrossed that they missed all the efforts by people on the ground to reach them via radio, cell phones, etc.

You believe this? Ninety minutes, two men, never looked up from their screens, never checked? Pardon me, my neck aches.

Isn't the most plausible explanation that both pilots fell asleep (which may say a lot about overly long working and dead-heading hours).

Pilots have nodded off before. Maybe 20 years ago the Air Force sent fighters to chase a westbound cargo jet that overshot LAX and only when (if memory serves) they pulled up close to the cockpit and opened up with cannon fire did the pilots wake up.

Tell us about over-work, fatigue, sleep, scheduling and whether the policies of the FAA and the airlines are creating a hazard. And if not, tells us the reasons why not.

You do not get the concern?

At the very least these guys were flying distracted and you really want to defend that and cut them slack?

Some jobs require that you pay attention and flying an airplane is one of them. Most people can walk away from a bus or train crash.

The real legislation should involve making sure their schedules are not unreasonable and they really should be paid much as a bus or train driver if not more. However, I suspect those pilots were paid better than most.

Going off task for an hour while flying a multimillion dollar aircraft filled with paying customers is simply not acceptable. One of the flight crew, OK, but both, not OK.

Your take hardly inspires confidence or trust.

... either with each other or with a couple of stewardesses. Since that didn't happen I assume too that they were asleep.

Regarding laptops for flight use -- why not require that either the pilot or co-pilot must be awake and "driving" the plane while the other naps or uses their lap top

It's semi-insulting to think that both the pilot and co-pilot were too busy with their laptops they couldn't monitor communication or the flight.

I agree with Patrick about the old-fashioned air stairs. They were part of my childhood air travel experiences of the 1950s, and I like seeing them on the rare occasions when they are still used.

A few years ago, I was at the Airline History Museum in Kansas City, and climbed the stairs to view the interior of their gorgeously-restored Lockheed Super Constellation. I paused at the top of the air stairs and turned around. Newsreel soundtracks played in my head: "Secretary of State John Foster Dulles arrives in Geneva for talks with the Soviets. . ." "Hollywood comes to Rome as handsome William Holden arrives for the filming of . . ."

What could I do? I waved at the imaginary cameras.

So Al Franken, last year's of-the-people liberal hero, has been revealed as a...politician. Why does this surprise you?

Whenever a problem arises, from meth usage to distracted driving, it's so tempting to give more power to government that this becomes society's default response. You sit back and watch your chosen set of bad guys get perp-walked and then flung into the oubliette. Then they come for YOU.

I wonder why the Northwest incident has been much in the news and there seems to be little to no attention given to the Delta 767 that landed on a taxiway at Atlanta on Oct 19, 2009? Shouldn't landing a large commercial aircraft on a taxiway be considered a much more serious (newsworthy) problem? This is especially considering that ATL is a very busy airport and there was the very real possibility of another aircraft or airport vehicle being on that taxiway even at a low traffic volume time of day.

Questions RE: Northwest incident: Isn't there the possibility that a sudden problem occurring that requires an immediate response by the flight crew? Wouldn't using a laptop prevent the rapid access to flight controls?

With both pilots not monitoring the instruments, is it not possible that something slow and gradual could occur that would not set off any alarms (ex: slow loss of altitude or cabin pressure) that would be caught if the flight crew were monitoring instruments?

Didn't the airline try to contact the flight crew via SELCAL? Are the SELCAL chimes audible without headphones?

Why the delay in getting military aircraft ready to intercept the flight? Granted, there is probably not much of a threat possibility from central Canada as there would be from other areas, but Minnesota is still a border state and with the elevated security levels we have these days, it seems that intercept aircraft would be able to get in the air sooner.

I too miss the days of using airstairs. There was something magical about walking across the tarmac or taking a bus past other planes to a remote stand; the drama of seeing your aircraft loom above you when viewed from ground level & marveling at the size of those tires & looking in the intakes of a JT9D with the whine of the APU and scent of burned kerosene in the air. Now at best we only get a glimpse of our bird through a dirty terminal window before walking down a bare windowless jetway then into the cabin. Sometimes you never know the tail number of the aircraft you fly on, or get to see the livery. Convenient but impersonal. Even the walk across the tarmac to a Dash8 has been taken away now at my home field (KEUG) in favor of a fixed jetway with a semi-steep flight of steps inside the terminal.