My questions are multitude and I don’t know where to begin.
1. If you can use a laptop safely in a cockpit to surf the web — and I’m assuming if they were checking their schedules, they were online — then why can’t we use our cell phones?
2. Why isn’t there a method for contacting the flight attendants? One of those stupid Air Phones with a number for dialing into it; an attendant with a satellite phone; or one of those cell phones that don’t really impact air flight at all — these all seem like options to me.
3. An hour plus and you didn’t hear beeping? Didn’t look up? And you call this “innocuous”? Really?
4. And for the flight attendants: you didn’t decide to check on the flight status until you were already an hour past your destination? No one said anything before then? You didn’t think anything before then? Wow.
Lastly, to the pilots, who likely have lost their licenses and their livelihoods, I hope your wives (if you have them) beat you soundly with a big stick.
Best of luck to you all in explaining this to the public.
Lisa
So true. And #1 is an especially good question. What gives??
Sounds like you’ve been having some BAD flying experiences lately?! I totally feel your pain. What is up with air travel in America? It used to be so much fun (remember when we would get dressed up, treated nicely, and served fancy food? THOSE days are long gone, unless you fly first class) now it’s just several hours of torture in the sky…
I read about that incident on Google News. Ridiculous! And I bet it resulted in some passengers missing connections. I’m not a calm traveler, so I would have been *freaking* out!
The entire episode is just so crazy. Nothing about it makes any sense. You would think the passengers were starting to wonder why they were an hour behind schedule too.
Great blog, glad I discovered it! Looking forward to reading more.
Yes. What IS it with these pilots??? How both could have been totally irresponsible is beyond me. As a passenger I would have been tempted to pound on the cockpit door and demand to know what was happening!!
I’ve never understood what our electronic devices do that could hinder airplane safety. I never turn off my phone. Just my way of being a renegade, I guess.
Hysterical!! Gosh, it’s just so ridiculous, it doesn’t make sense.
I’m wondering if the passengers started getting antsy. I heard part of the sequence of events that lead to the problem was an extended bathroom break for the pilot. Geesh.
I rarely fly anymore, but when I did, it was across the ocean. I knew exactly how long I had to sit in that plane, and if the pilot had not started our descent towards Charles de Gaulle at the right moment, I would have been all over the flight crew for an explanation.