Laptops in the cockpit,, really?

 Are you freaking kidding me?

 Last week the story broke about a Northwest Airlines flight that got diverted and missed its intended destination by oh about 150 MILES. Now I have absolutely no sense of direction. I've lived in the same city for more than 10 years and still get lost. But 150 miles? Are you freaking kidding me?

 Wait it gets better. So naturally, everyone's wondering what were they doing? How could this happen? Were they sleeping? Were they hurt? Was it a terrorist? I mean this is a post 9/11 world we live in, we have to take these things into consideration.

 These brainiacs, Captains Timothy Cheney and Richard Cole, adamantly denied sleeping on the job. They instead, initially, say they were engrossed in a heated argument and lost track of time. A HEATED ARGUMENT? Are you freaking kidding me? Was that really the best you can do? At least if you said you were sleeping you could get some sympathy points, dillweeds. Oh the poor pilots they’re so fatigued and overworked.

 It turns out these geniuses were on their laptops. Other than them reading this blog there is no excuse that will fly with me on this. It’s totally unacceptable. So, one of you couldn't fly the plane while the other surfed for porn? I'm just saying.

 Now I confess I occasionally use my cell phone while driving. It's not a habit (I'm not Maria Shriver for crissakes). But occasionally the need to send a text or make a call coincides with me being in my car. (When you live in a city that tops the worst commutes list annually this tends to happen). I realize this is dangerous and I'm not proud of it, but this is altogether different. There were hundreds of lives in your hands, literally. Thank God no one was hurt.

 The craziest thing is the airline has no policy against this. So who knows how often this is happening. I don't even want to imagine that the person piloting my plane is playing Mafia Wars on Facebook. It’s frightening. The airline industry has enough of a stigma for being unsafe with plane crashes and drunk pilots, these guys are not helping at all.

 I hope if anything good comes out of this mess. I hope that the FAA will review the policies and institute measures to prevent this from happening again. I mean it would seem pretty obvious to me that surfing the Net and flying the plane don’t exactly fit well together, but hey what do I know.

You can read more about this story here.