Remember last October when those two Northwest pilots overshot their Minneapolis destination by 150 miles because of some argument or discussion or something while both were on their personal laptops?

Now, Delta (which merged with Northwest) is taking steps to see that won’t happen again by “making software and avionics changes” on some of its planes, according to the Wall St. Journal – changes that will enable Delta dispatchers to use “sound alerts” to raise distracted pilots.

You might remember that everyone in the world seemed to be trying to reach those pilots (radio contact was lost for a long 77 minutes) – trouble was, contact was attempted via silent text messages, which the oblivious pilots simply never noticed. They just kept cruising along…and along…

I think a great big loud “WHOOP-WHOOP” sound might do the trick.