I feel sorry for the two pilots of Northwest Flight 188 that lost their jobs because they overflew the intended airport of landing. What is worse is that their licences might be revoked and boom, their goes their entire career.
You will all agree that everybody makes mistakes and that it would sound a bit harsh on these two guys if you take into consideration the experience these guys have got and never had they done anything wrong before. The one pilot has got about 20 000 hours logged after his name and the other one about 11 000 hours.
(Maybe they were bored to hell after spending more than half their lifes in one of these birds in the air and flying the same routes over and over again.) These two guys would most propably be excellent pilots and might have become so well oiled in what they were doing that they could do it with their eyes closed, that is figure of speach now.
But to cut to the chase, I think what they have done has caused irreversible damage to the airline they were working for.
I can just imagine that a lot of passengers will have lost all trust in the airlines and they will think twice before getting onto a plane. After all, it was a huge safety incident and anything could have happened and there would have been one more story for Aircrash Investigations.
To be a pilot is only something that a small percentage of our human population are priveledged to do. You have to have a passion for it and it takes hardwork and perseverance. One should also be aware that 100's of people are putting their lives in your hands if you become an Airline Pilot. There is something special in being a pilot and therefore it is only very few people that achieves this.
For this reason there shouldn't be any excuses for doing things like this. I would agree that their commercial licences be revoked but let them keeo their private licences as I am sure these guys have a passion for what they do and one should take everything away from them. I am pretty sure that they are capable of flying a plane and even more so if they haven't got the luxury of an auto pilot that can cause them to drift away into cloud 9 like they did with the nice big Airbus.
Well it is easy to speak, we don't know what the real circumstances were. They even might have suffered from a lack of oxygen or even a lack of rest between their flights. All we can do now is speculate untill the incestigation has been completed.
To conclude, I find flying to exciting to fall asleep whilst doing it
