Reports last week of a commercial plane that missed its destination airport by 150 miles initially raised fears that the pilots had fallen asleep, or, worse, that the plane had been hijacked. But according to the Natural Transportation Safety Board, it turns out the pilots were working on their laptops in the cockpit, causing the error. Before you ask, no, working on a computer while in-flight is absolutely not allowed.
Talk about a scary situation! The pilots didn't realize their mistake until a flight attendant called into the cockpit asking for an estimated arrival time. If you ask me, that's far worse than texting while driving. They tried to contact the silent plane for over an hour with no response. What could the pilots have been doing on their laptops that distracted them from responding to calls for nearly an hour — not to mention flying 150 miles in the wrong direction?
Schuh
French Sole
L'Autre Chose
Um, not to be a stickler, but I believe you mean "NATIONAL Transportation Safety Board". But hey, I could be wrong.....
1How much do you want to bet it was gambling or porn. Maybe it's time to rethink having WiFi on the planes. I was worried about my boss being able to email or IM me while on flights, or people being annoying using Skype or iChat, I never considered the pilots being on their laptops.
2Yes I have been distracted by my gadgets, but I was NOT driving a car or flying an airplane at the time.
3Yes, sometimes I get distracted by what I'm doing on my macbook. It can artwork, homework, or just surfing the web, but if I'm really into it, I ignore everything around me and I can easily lose track of time. It's that reason that I like to have my macbook announce the time every half hour—it helps me stay on track!
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