"Tom Sixkiller" wrote in message ...
"Gerald Sylvester" wrote in message
. net...
I just get tired of mindless stereotyping of MBAs as non-thinking
clones,
lawyers as dishonest money-grubbers, doctors as drug-pushers,
accountants as
crooks, teachers as uncaring civil-servants, etc.

don't forget about B744 pilots as just "heavy machinery operators."


Buncha winged bus drivers!!!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All professional pilots have had this almost happen
to them. Fatique can contribute to the "set up" as well as
unfamiliarity with the area. Jets move in fast, with two-man crews
you don't have but a few seconds to look out the window and then its
back to checklists, radio freq changes, complex arrival clearances and
last second changes and speed adjustments...and instrument
malfunctions (is the ILS even turned on down there? Whoops now it
is...) and after a month of flying runway numbers start running
together. Ever get lost in your car? What, were you stupid or
something? No, odds were you were just trying to get to point B in a
hurry, you got bored and complacent with navigating and screwed up the
street names. At LAX this wrong runway syndrome happens every month.
Four parallel runways ensures this. Controllers are run ragged by the
penny-pinching FAA and do the best they can. They were very
accommodating when a UAL 747 tried to land at Hawthorne twenty years
ago. To prevent this you must not give in to ATC pressure to go
visual early. When ATC says "you don't have the runway yet?" Be
defiant and say No, even if it's embarrassing. You do see *a* runway
in front of you, but without some sort of Nav backup you're asking for
it. The visual is an FAA side letter to terminate IFR early, and you
are not required to take it. Now if you're poking along in a
bugsmasher, you have a great deal more time to analyze the airport and
veer off if you fixated on the first peice of pavement you saw.

pac "any piece of pavement in a storm" plyer