Oops...

I hate when that happens! I don't know how many of you have seen this little incident in the news (and if you have, you've probably only heard the edited version), but it sure made me laugh when i heard it. For those of you who don't know of this, what happened was, a Southwest Airlines pilot either had a stuck mic or had inadvertently keyed his mic while he was talking to the other pilot while in the cockpit and en route. So, the net effect was everyone on frequency got to hear all sorts of things that i'm sure this pilot is absolutely mortified went out over the air.

Now for the record, i am all for people holding whatever opinions they want about anything at all, even though, as in this case, i may not agree with them, so long as those opinions are discussed and shared in the proper venue. As this was an honest mistake, and the pilot thought he was having a private conversation with his fellow crew mate (although the fact that cockpit voice recorders can hold up to four hours of audio and transcripts of said recorders fall into the public realm if an accident should occur, nothing said in the cockpit of an airliner is really that private), i really don't see why this is such a media circus. I mean, everyone says things in private that they would never say in public, and i'm sure if this guy knew he was live and on the air he would have never said such things. In fact, occurrences such as this are not all that uncommon. It's just that the conversation is usually more benign, such as the pilots accidentally transmitting what they think is going over the PA to the passengers. Hell, even i have accidentally broadcast stuff that i didn't mean to. And considering the conversations that take place while i'm at work, i'm damn lucky the stuff that's gone out has all been G rated.

At any rate, the stuff this pilot said was pretty offensive even to my ears, but i still got a chuckle out of it thinking about how this pilot must have felt when he got call into the bosses office and heard the tape for himself.

Ladies and gentlemen, i present to you the Worlds Most Embarrassed Airline Pilot...