Just saw the movie "Amelia" over the weekend. I thought it was a very well done film, Hillary Swank was very good and if you like vintage aviation you'll love the movie. The flying sequences were beautiful.

We all knew the ending before we went in. Emelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific in 1937 while trying to find Howland Island to refuel. They were never heard from again and no trace of them or the Lockeed Electra they were flying attempting a flight around the world was ever found.

Finding Howland Island with the primitive navigation systems of the time was akin to finding a grain of sand along a 20 mile stretch of interstate highway.

The timing of the movie is ironic, in that a NorthWest Airlines flight crew somehow missed finding Minneapolis on a flight from San Diego. The Airbus A-20 they were flying has the type of technology that Amelia Earhart could only have dreamed of. Sophisticated to the point that it's impossible not to know exactly where you are at any moment of a flight. Heck, Frontier even has a channel which shows your position, airspeed and altitude for passengers.

The pilots were engaged in something else than being pilots.

Which brings me to an old saying in the flying business.

"There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots. But there are no old, bold, pilots"

Some day we might find the remains of that Lockheed Electra that disappeared 72 years ago. Let's also hope we find out what the heck that flight crew was doing, and more importantly NOT doing so we can all feel a little safer as passengers.