AircraftOwner Online

    It is interesting all the hullaboo about the 2 NW pilots. In the early 70's, I was working traffic late one night in Chicago when AA50 on J64? PWE,LMN,BDF,JOT,GSH?, FWA? was switch over to me. On the mid shift, somewhere west of BDF I, we usually gave them the short cut, BDF, SBN, CRL on course. I called 3 or 4 times, he never responded, so he went the long way.  It was late at night.  It wasn’t that important.  They made the turn NE at BDF to JOT, but at JOT he did not make the turn back east. I quickly pointed him out to SBN High and MKE High. SBN pointed him out to PMM and CLE. MKE high pointed him out to MSP.  I am sure one of them pointed him out to Toronto.  The last time I saw him he went off my scope NE bound into Canadian airspace. I guess they figured out what was going on sometime. I never heard of a crash.  A few people over the years asked, why I did not file a violation against them.  I expect when those guys came to their senses and could not contact anyone, because they were still on my frequency hundreds of miles away, had no idea where they were or what VOR to tune and the lights on the ground surely were strange, that they, not a one of them, ever nodded off again in the rest of their entire career.  I am sure I got 3 more alert pilots for the rest of their careers by not saying anything than the whole FAA apparatus will ever get by this violation and revocation
    There was at least two incidences of  UA or someone else going west into SFO and east into NY, they ended up out over the Pacific or the Atlantic. Actually both of these excursions happened, I just forget who the carriers were. Then there was the AK C130 that overflew BRW on into the Beaufort Sea or the flight from Cairo to Mombasa that kind of returned to Cairo when waypoint 9 arrive in the INS and the airplane turned around to go to 1 in the middle of one dark night in northeastern Africa
    It is funny they are making such a deal of the MSP one, when there are the above four or five I know of that no one said a thing about.  I am sure that there are just as many more that a bunch of others have experienced and know of  that were brought to a happy ending and a very interesting and full career without the authorities being more holly than thou.