Airliner crew flies 150 miles past airport

On Oct 27, 10:42*pm, Mike Ash wrote:
In article ,
*brian whatcott wrote:

Mike Ash wrote:

It's the accent upon the 100+ miles that gets me.
In a car world 100+ miles -is- a long way.
In an airliner at 400 knots that's 15 minutes.

News companies are more interested in getting a story than actually
informing people. "150 miles" sounds scarier and gets more eyeballs than
"15 minutes", so that's what they print. It's sad, but I don't know how
to fix it.

Would you prefer the "out of contact with Air Traffic for One hour" slant?

Yes! That's the major problem behind what happened. The 150-mile
(15-minute?) overshoot is trivial by comparison. It *should* be the
focus of the headlines.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon

This crew willfully endangered the lives of passengers by violating
company policy and Federal regulations. Flying in Class A airspace
without a clearance and without radio contact with the controllers
endangers not only the one airplane but every airplane that that one
airplane might collide with. Emergency revocation of their tickets
was hardly overkill.

Comparisons to drunk drivers getting off light are a poor analogy.
How many of those drunk drivers are commercial bus drivers and do they
retain their tickets? I doubt it. Professional pilots and
professional drivers are held to higher standard than their private
brethren.