Have you ever been driving on the freeway, thinking, singing,in your own semi-hypnotized cocoon, when you realize you’ve shot right past a familiar exit? Magnify that mistake by 150 miles while high in the air, at the controls of a passenger jet. The passengers were starting to worry when they weren’t in sight of land,long after they were due to have disembarked at the Minneapolis-St Paul airport, in a routine flight from San Diego. They’d have had larger concerns had they been aware that their pilots had been incommunicado for 80 minutes, and
armed fighter jets were preparing to chase them down and perhaps pluck them from the sky. It’s still anyone’s guess as to why they ignored attempts to contact them and veered so far off course. They’ve dismissed their initial excuse that they’d been involved in a heated discussion about company policy, and swear they weren’t napping on the job. I’m not saying passenger aircraft may be so highly mechanized that the pilot can simply nod off, but you won’t hear of a Greyhound driver passing 150 miles beyond his destination.