As I have been agonizing over the tragedy in Michigan, a thought kept running through my mind: WHY COMPUTERS DON'T FLY AIRPLANES. As I finally examined that thought, I realized that is was a perfect analogy. The State of Michigan was running on autopilot quoting outdated information and refusing to consider facts. Here's what I see. When you look at today's modern aviation technology, you have to marvel at the level of sophistication of the machines that assist the pilots in navigation, flying, and landing. A modern airplane can fly completely automated to the point of taking off and landing. The only thing the pilot has to do is get the plane to the proper runway and once it has landed, get it to the proper gate. Why then do we still have pilots? Why should the airlines spend good money on a human being in the cockpit? The short answer is that the human being has something that the technology does not have. The human being has EXPERIENCE, JUDGEMENT, and HEART or COURAGE!!!!! If something goes wrong in the cockpit, the machines would respond in a predictable pattern following the "rules" which may not apply in that particular emergency. On the other hand, the human being can exercise his/her vast years of flying EXPERIENCE, can exercise JUDGEMENT in dealing with that unique emergency situation, and will employ their HEART or COURAGE to get the airplane down safely against all odds and logic. Remember the airplane that landed in Sou ix City? It had lost all hydraulic pressure which meant all the controls were inoperative. The pilots figured out a way to control the plane using the engines. No machine could have figured that out. The pilots were able to crash land and 180 people out of 250 walked away from the crash. Remember the 747 whose cargo door blew out in flight with a full load of 500 passengers? Against all odds, the pilots landed safely in Honolulu. When the Boeing engineers did the simulations, they said there was NO WAY that the airplane should have made it. But it did. All passengers survived because there were human beings in the cockpit who called on their EXPERIENCE (one of the pilots was a glider pilot in his spare time and he credited that experience as the reason he was able to land the plane), JUDGEMENT about being able to think through the situation and act in a way that was not prescribed but was effective and HEART or COURAGE because they had a strong will to live and get the plane back despite all odds. I don't want to belabor the point, but what I saw in the KODO incident was a bunch of bureaucrats who wanted to play it safe, follow the rules, no matter how outdated or illogical, and ignore the facts. They did not call on EXPERIENCE, JUDGEMENT or HEART. They just blindly wanted to apply the rules-kind of like a computer flying an airplane. I guess it is a good thing that COMPUTERS DON'T FLY AIRPLANES. It is also a resounding inditement of why BUREAUCRATS SHOULDN'T FLY AIRPLANES either!!!!! [MS] [Posted in FML issue 1974]