United pilot has meltdown on airplane. In part: Passengers reportedly fled a flight before it could take off on Saturday after a United Airlines pilot went on a bizarre rant over the intercom. In a ball cap and casual shirt, the pilot remarked on her appearance after she boarded the flight at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in the late afternoon, passenger Randy Reiss wrote on Twitter. Dont worry. Im going to let my co-pilot fly it. Hes a man. Reiss got out of his seat, collected his bag and made for the exit. Half the flight followed my lede, he wrote. Okay, if you dont feel safe get off the airplane, but otherwise we can go, the pilot says in the video, still cheerful, as her passengers begin to revolt. Did I offend you? she says to someone in first class. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2017/02/12/a-united-pilot-ranted-about-trump-clinton-and-divorce-her-passengers-fled/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_united-flight-1110am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.820029b16f03#comments
Unhinged woman was my first though, another reason they should be in the Kitchen, bedroom, and nursery. Then I remembered that fool that flew the Germanwings 9525 into the mountain. Then I quit thinking about it.
Yes, and it can be very disruptive in the normal flow of things. I hope that she can get some help. I don't blame her because it can be totally incapacitating when it is sprung on an individual who has to make the terminal decision to sever the marriage, especially when kids are involved. I wouldn't fly with her in her present state. I would give her a chance , however, and fly with her later.
Could not disagree more. This lady needs to be grounded permanently. As in forever. She demonstrated that she can lose control of herself when faced with a stressful situation. I would see it completely differently had she gotten lathered up at home or driving in and called her boss and said, look, I'm not right now because of some stuff going on at home or whatever. She didn't do that. The steps involved between the loss of self control required to do what she did and locking a copilot in the hallway while she offs herself are ZERO! We had an F-16 student pilot get depressed over the loss of a girlfriend and subsequently take off on a 500 mile drive AWOL in the middle of the week to go stand on the edge of the Royal Gorge bridge. He didn't jump, thank God. When he came back and told his commander what he had done, he was grounded and ultimately got counseling and a bunch of other howyadoin' stuff. He went to an FEB and I was the only one who explained how the loss of control required to leave work and do what he did that day was no different than what would be required to sit through a brief and then later fly his Viper into the side of a mountain in Colorado as an A-10 stud had done some years earlier, for very similar reasons actually. In the end, the wing commander agreed with me. He lost his wings. I was glad for him and the AF. When it was done, all my pilot bros said that was the right call and thanked me for fighting for it. All the dumb (non-pilot) docs said he was fine and posed no risk and should be returned to flying. This lady is no different. She can go do whatever she wants, so long as she has zero responsibility for other people's lives. Guess what the airline will do! They'll likely do some sensitive BS and return her to fly after a flight surgeon, most of whom are complete retards, clears her on the recommendations of some other nitwit psychiatrist. Watch.
Hack. She is not a professional. A professional will know when to put passenger safety above personal issues. Take a week....hell a month or two off. Drop trips left and right until you get your head right. Showing up for duty in street clothes, berating pax and going loco was the first clue.
Of course, we really don't know what happened. Maybe she tried to call in sick, and the scheduler said something like "Look, we really really need you. Just fly the airplane to San Francisco, and we'll get someone to take the rest of the trip from there." Wouldn't be the first time!
And that, somehow, actually changes what she did? There is absolutley no undoing what she did. And there is no way she should be able to explain it away. She became unhinged. And fortunately it happened before the flight got underway. She should be toast. Burned toast, and tossed aside. Sorry. Unfortunately, it's unlikely to happen as some "feel good" people will end up making innocent people take on the risk of flying her again.
Well, yes, actually. At a minimum it changes the perspective. If she marched up there determined to make a scene and that was that, then I have less sympathy-- although I still argue that she needs help. If, on the other hand, she recognized that she wasn't fit to fly and was talked into it by crew scheduling, that does change the perspective a bit.
She should get all the help she needs, just not as a pilot with more than private priviledges. As I said, there will be plenty of people lining up to sob story this thing up and argue as you do, that she works under a coercive scheduling aparatus, and, while distraught over the loss her partner or whatever, she felt that the only way she could have saved all those passengers from harm was by making a complete arse of herself before them. The machine made her do it argument. She could have simply not shown up for work! Gimme a break. It's unfortunate that eventually she might just be your pilot...but you won't know it.
