This is the question being asked today, two days removed from
the episode on board a
JetBlue flight when the captain's erratic behavior forced the co-pilot to lock him out of the cockpit; Is the process of hiring pilots sufficient to assure that they have the required mental stability for the job?
When the question was put to me this morning by
Stephanie Abrams of
The Weather Channel, I said, overall, yes. Look at the successes over the years. Millions of flights, thousands of passengers "actin' the fool" and getting booted, sometimes arrested for mental breakdowns or simple air rage. One can't expect
all that misbehavior to remain in the back of the plane. Pilots are human too.
Once again documenting the ups and downs of aviation has me on the run. Was it April 2011, when I wrote, "I am living in fear. I am terrified of my inbox. The ringing of my telephone sounds like the dun-dun dun-dun soundtrack of Jaws." Here we are 11 months later and the crescendo of events is even more bizarre than last year.
Full disclosure, before last week, I hadn't flown on US Airways in years. Sure, I'd written a bit about the company, some positive posts, some not so. But when US Airways "media day" in Phoenix coincided by lucky coincidence with an already scheduled visit to Arizona to tour Marana Aerospace Solutions near Tucson, (about which, more later!) I took the opportunity to attend and hear what the airline's executives have to say. They have quite a story. 
The contrast is like day and night. In the span of 24-hours I have written about two countries with vastly different views of the importance of aviation to their national future; Turkey and India.
