Covid impact: Out-of-practice airline pilots are making mid-air errors

Potentially disastrous errors all took place in the US in recent months as pilots returned to work

Back in the cockpit after time off recovering from Covid-19, an airline pilot forgot to start his plane’s second engine for takeoff, a mistake that could have ended in disaster if he hadn’t aborted the flight.
 

Another pilot, fresh from a seven-month layoff because of the pandemic and descending to land early in the morning, realized almost too late he hadn’t lowered the wheels and pulled out of the approach just 800 feet (240 meters) from the tarmac.

Weeks earlier, a passenger plane leaving a busy airport headed off in the wrong direction, flown by a captain who was back