flying the unfriendly skies?. From the BBC:
An American Airlines pilot terrified passengers when he asked Christians to identify themselves and allegedly went on to call non-Christians "crazy".
Some passengers on the flight from Los Angeles to New York were so worried they tried to call relatives on their mobile phones.
The pilot, whose name was not released, asked Christians on Friday's flight to raise their hands.
He then suggested non-Christians talk to the Christians about their faith.
He went on to say that "everyone who doesn't have their hand raised is crazy", passenger Amanda Nelligan told CBS news...
Arthur Silbur also wrote about this episode on Sunday. Presumably this happened after the flight was already airborne--personally, if something like this had happened to me while the plane was still on the ground I would have insisted on being let off.
It also raises an interesting question. There's been lots of attention to various ineffective and counterproductive "security" measures supposedly intended to keep religious fanatics out of the cockpit--but what happens when the religious fanatic is supposed to be there? Have any of the airlines got any procedure in place or any training for what to do if your pilot goes insane mid-flight?
Apparently in this case the co-pilot didn't take over the flight and remove the pilot. Could he have done so? And if so, why didn't he? The apparent lack of reaction doesn't say much for the security of the current system. Suppose this lunatic had decided to crash the plane into a building--would anyone outside the cockpit even have known something was wrong until it was too late?
12:44:18 PM 
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