Coming face-to-face with this guy might make pilots think twice about that second game of Hearts.The two Pacific Northwest pilots who overshot a Minneapolis runway by 150 miles have appealed the FAA’s decision to revoke their licenses. Captain Tim Cheney of Gig Harbor and his co-pilot Richard Cole of Salem, Oregon, were punished after causing a national security incident because they lost track of time while tooling around on their computers.Northwest Flight 188’s unscheduled detour on October 21st made national headlines. And in the ensuing weeks, Congress, as it likes to do, has toyed with the idea of creating a law to “fix” the issue: Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) introduced a bill Thursday to ban laptops from the cockpit.When they realized their error Cheney and Cole were minutes away from being intercepted by a National Guard fighter jet. Just a thought but, if the goal is to curtail unprofessional behavior in the cockpit, wouldn’t a buzz from an F-15 be much more effective than another rule likely to be ignored?
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