The FAA ordered an emergency revocation of the airline transport pilot certificates of the two pilots of Northwest 188 immediately following the October 21 incident. The pilots stated they were "distracted by their laptop computers." Yeah, right. Maybe they were dreaming about their laptop computers.
Whatever the case in the cockpit of that A320, it's clear the pilots became complacent. They had probably flown that route hundreds of times before. They thought it was a routine operation and that the flight would follow the same progression as previous flights. It did not. The pilots failed to maintain the high degree of vigilance required during air operations and placed hundreds of innocent people at tremendous risk. The fact that no one was hurt can be attributed to dumb luck.
Complacency kills. There's no place where that's more true than an airplane. The pilots of Northwest 188 were experienced, yet they failed in a very basic and fundamental way. All the experience in the world doesn't make a pilot immune to death by airplane. Most pilots have heard the story of the two Civil Air Patrol ATPs that flew a Cessna 182 into a mountainside near Las Vegas in 2007. That's stuff pilots learn how to avoid in the infancy of their pilot careers. Hours in a logbook made no difference that night at Mount Potosi. I'd argue all those hours even worked against these pilots by breeding complacency.
One of the world's best and most competent pilots, Richard L. Collins, has said, "Hours in a logbook aren't important because the most important hour is the next one." The next hour you spend in an airplane is the only one that has the power to kill you, and it will do so without hesitation if you allow it. Sometimes years of logbook pages only amount to blatant disregard and disrespect for the basics of aviation safety. It's as though some pilots think of hours in a logbook as a form of body armor which will protect a pilot from death in a crash. The truth is, a twenty thousand hour pilot is just as vulnerable to the risks of flight as a thousand hour pilot.
That thunderstorm in the windscreen doesn't care how many hours you have written on pages in some logbook. That mountain lurking in the night won't be any more forgiving to an experienced pilot, and an in-flight fire will feel just as hot to an airline pilot as a student pilot.
The risks stay present no matter how long or how far you fly. Risks don't diminish as logbook pages are filled. The dangers of flight don't discriminate between young and old, inexperienced or experienced, routine or nonstandard... We're all vulnerable. No one is exempt or immune from the risks of flight.
Remember the expression, "Stay alert. Stay alive." If you stay vigilant each hour you fly, you'll survive each hour you fly. Relax or become arrogant and the airplane won't tolerate it. The inherent dangers of flight will reach up and snatch you when you least expect it.
One of my favorite things about flying airplanes is the requirement to focus solely on the task at hand. I love how airplanes hold me accountable for that each moment I'm in them, and if I stray the airplane will remind me to re-focus because there's a lot at stake. Remember, all those hours in your past won't protect you from the most important hour, the next one.
