One More Reason Not to Fly

by Pa Rock

Traveling Fool

 

This past Sunday evening an off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot was catching a ride on Alaskan Airlines flight from Everett, Washington, to San Francisco, California.   The flight was being operated by a regional carrier, Horizon Airlines.  The hitchhiking pilot was seated in the spare “jump seat” in the plane’s cockpit behind the pilot and first officer.  At some point not too long after leaving Everett, and after the plane had reached its normal flying altitude, the visiting pilot tried to shut down the plane’s engines while it was in flight.
 
The would-be mass-murderer, Joseph David Emerson, was unsuccessful in his attempt to turn off the engines of the aircraft, and airline personnel managed to subdue him and remove him from the cockpit.  The plane made an emergency landing in Portland where the homicidal pilot was arrested and charged with, among other things, the attempted murder of 83 individuals.     The other passengers, the ones who paid for their transport, were booked onto other flights at the airport in Portland.

It is apparently a common airline practice for off-duty pilots, flight attendants, and other airline personnel to snag free rides in the cockpit jump seats.  

Perhaps saving the cost of a regular passenger seat by crowding an extra one into the cockpit is not such a good idea.  Perhaps it is also a risky business to have that many people whose lives are totally dependent on the fragile mental health of the individuals flying the plane, sitting almost on each other’s laps seven miles up in the air.
 

If airline travel is stressful on passengers, and I am saying that it is, then it is undoubtedly stressful on pilots and other airline personnel as well - and there are obvious dangers in flying "stressed out" skies.  

Just sayin’ . . .