This is in no way to be disrespectful of the two poor souls on this flight, just a general thought on the pilots bailing out of a seemingly doomed plane.
Sounds cynical maybe but in the bigger picture it is better to loose a crew of 2 than to have an unmanned 744 crash lets say into Brooklyn or Manhattan. In WW2 I guess the crews didn't care much as they were usually over enemy ground and who cares where the plane crashes if the intention was to bomb the hell out of the people below you anyway... Wasn't there though an american B-XX (don't know the number, before the 52) bomber that had engine troubles on a trainings mission from Alaska to the Northwest of the US, crew bailed out and the plane flew over terrain for some thirty minutes or so before crashing in a remote, mountainous area of Canada...?
Last edited by grimmrad; 5th Sep 2010 at 17:22.