Is it just me or does the USA today seem to always try to put the airlines (understandable) and airline pilots (unnecessary and demeaning) in a bad light. I can understand making the "drunk" pilots look kinda bad, but yesterday's USA today was just disgusting to me. I couldn't find the entire article online, but here is the summary (which makes the pilots look even worse than the article in its entirety) of the article from USA Today's website:
Nearing Midway, pilots worried
Runway status debated in cockpit before crash
[FINAL Edition]
USA TODAY - McLean, Va.
Author: Alan Levin
Date: Jun 21, 2006
Start Page: A.1
Section: NEWS
Text Word Count: 423
Abstract (Document Summary)
"If it's poor, it's scary," said First Officer Steven Oliver, a reference to reports that snow on the runway had made braking conditions on the runway "poor."
Oliver and [Bruce Sutherland] told investigators after the crash that they saw Joshua's father, Leroy, his face bloodied, holding his 4- year-old son, Jake, and screaming at the pilots. Joshua was trapped inside the car.
The transcript shows that the mood of the cockpit was a mix of casual banter and concern. Before the situation became chaotic, the pilots joked and laughed. After concluding they could land at 7:04 p.m., Oliver quoted from the 1980 film Airplane, a spoof of air- disaster movies. "Picked the wrong day to stop sniffin' glue," he said.
Now did they really need to put all that in the article? Especially the whole Airplane quote. The drunken pilots over the past couple years put the profession in a bad enough light, this just adds to it.