in flight. Another condition, alcohol abuse, has been found to inhibit the abilities of some flight crews. A northwest crew flying from North Dakota to Minnesota was found to be intoxicated on the job ("Air Safety" 61). Some people refuse to drive at night because of the number of drunk drivers on the road. Would passengers want a drunken pilot to be responsible for their lives while 20,000 feet up in the air? Another reason for flight crew error is pressure to meet flight time schedules. Some of these flights take place during hazardous weather conditions. When I was younger, I saw an airplane crash at the St. Louis Airport after the pilot was ordered to take off even though the plane had ice on its wings. The airplane skidded off the runway because the pilot could not control the steering mechanisms on the icy runway. Other incidents have occurred solely because of bad weather and an urgency to stay on schedule. When flight 803 came in to land at Tripoli, the pilot decided to land the plane even though a dense fog covered the runway. One hour earlier a Soviet jet scheduled to land at the same airport detoured to another to avoid the fog. There were no mechanical malfunctions of the plane; however, it missed the runway by more than a mile, cartwheeled, and slammed into two farmhouses ("New Qualms" 20). Another accident, which killed most of the passengers on board, occurred when an Air Florida Boeing 737 crashed into the Potomac River near Washington, D.C. in 1982. The speed gage for take off was covered with ice which caused the takeoff acceleration to be miscalculated (Helmreich 62). The most avoidable reason for an airplane to crash is faulty equipment that could have been repaired or replaced. A cargo door and part of the outer layer covering tore away from a nineteen year old Boeing 747 shortly after leaving Hawaii, sucking nine people out of the plane and sending them to their deaths over 20,000 feet to the sea (G...
