It does to a group of road warriors embarking Tuesday on a unique venture organized by FlyerTalk.com, an online community of expert travelers.

The Star Alliance MegaDO (as in a “really big ‘do”) starts with a briefing with United Airlines in Chicago then jets off to Newark, N.J., for a behind-the-scenes look at operations, including the in-flight meal kitchen, at Continental Airlines’ hub there. That night, the 88 participants, who collectively already hold 24 million frequent flyer miles, fly to Frankfurt and join more than 100 more airline junkies in Europe for meetings and briefings with Lufthansa executives.

The following day, a chartered Boeing 757-300 will take the group of 200 to Oslo, Norway, for breakfast with SAS, then Toulouse, France, for a tour of the Airbus A380 final assembly line. Then it’s back to Frankfurt for a stint at Lufthansa’s flight attendant training academy.

Airlines coddle these uber-travelers because they are among their best customers. With business travel in a deep slump, the Star Alliance airlines are bending over backwards for the event.

Stay tuned for updates on the group’s experience.

Last Wednesday US Airways Group Inc. announced a major realignment of its flying next year, revealing plans to cut capacity, eliminate 1,000 jobs and concentrate its network mainly around three hubs. One city slated to lose flights: Boston.

The next day, Thursday, jetBlue Airways Corp. announced a 30% increase in the number of flights offered starting with next year’s summer schedule.

To be sure, both airlines surely had the plans in the works for some time, and both announcements represent the continuation of long-standing trends. Previously we’ve looked at jetBlue’s climb in Boston and on the shift of domestic capacity to discount airlines from bigger network carriers.

But last week’s news just drove home the trend. In Boston, US Airways will close its pilots’ base and shift Shuttle flights to regional jets instead of full-sized Boeing and Airbus planes. Sure, the Embraer 190s US Airways will use are nice, comfortable planes – a major step up from the first generation of small jets. JetBlue flies the E190 out of Boston as well.

Still, the downsizing of the New York shuttle from Boston is significant, reflecting increased customer preference for the Acela train, decreased business travel and more competition from jetBlue, which now flies eight times a day between Boston and New York-Kennedy.

US Airways is also shrinking considerably in Las Vegas, where it will drop to 36 daily departures from 64 by February. Las Vegas was once a major hub for America West Airlines, which bought US Airways. But no longer. And five European destinations are being dropped from Philadelphia, a setback in that airline’s efforts to beef up its international reach.

Airlines are losing lots of money, and those that are struggling the most need to cut capacity in order to try to get fares up to profitable levels. When other carriers expand, perhaps able to make profits on lower fares, it just means that traffic shifts from one company to another.

There have been three colossal piloting errors at U.S. carriers in recent days.

• A Delta Air Lines crew landed a Boeing 767 on a taxiway in Atlanta.
• Northwest Airlines pilots go off in their own world of laptops and crew scheduling changes and fly 150 miles past Minneapolis, their destination.
• A Midwest Airlines captain taxis a regional jet past a hold line and stops only 70 feet short of an active runway where a Northwest Boeing 757 is rolling to takeoff. An air-traffic controller spotted the error, even before warnings went off in the control tower, and got the wayward pilot to halt in time. The planes came within an estimated 82 feet of each other.

All those cases are being investigated, but in only one, so far, has the Federal Aviation Administration revoked the licenses of the pilots. That one would be the one that got worldwide attention—the crew-scheduling fixated pilots who weren’t paying a lick of attention to flying their airplane. Not even a glance at instruments for more than an hour.

The carelessness of the Northwest pilots was the most inexplicable mistake. It may well have been the most egregious error, though their passengers were not in nearly as much danger as passengers on the other two planes (unless the Northwest jet was close to running out of fuel). The Minneapolis-bound pilots clearly broke company and FAA rules, and so many will see the swift revocations (and likely firings that will soon follow) as justified. They weren’t fatigued or confused or busy; they just both took an extended break from flying duties.

We can debate the severity of each incident – leave comments below. Plenty of readers will want to debate the appropriate punishment. And there likely will be legal and union challenges to the action the FAA has taken so far.

The bottom line, however, is that each one of those piloting mistakes may well have a good measure of complacency in the mix. Each one was a close-call that sends a message. They are warnings. With all the improvements made in aviation safety, the biggest danger now may simply be complacency.

That logic doesn’t apply to frequent flier programs. You may own the miles, but if you don’t live up to program rules, airlines will cancel the account and take back all your hard-flown, hard-earned rewards. And the rules, as this week’s Middle Seat shows, vary considerably airline-to-airline and require vigilance on the part of consumers.

Travelers do bear the responsibility of managing their own frequent flier accounts, and many complain of scant notice from airlines about looming cancellations. Indeed, once an account goes active for a few months, some airlines stop sending statements. People move, forwarding addresses expire. Jobs change, and people start flying different airlines. Email addresses change; spam filters block mass notices from airlines. Bottom line: you can’t count on an airline to alert you—you really need to track it yourself.

There are some online tracking tools, like AwardWallet.com. But it’s worthwhile to set up your own system so that you don’t have to worry about it. If you have an account with an airline that penalizes you for inactivity, make sure there is some regular activity. Use a grocery store or hotel program to feed points into your airline account. Use an account from an airline you no longer fly frequently for magazine or newspaper subscriptions – renewing them every year with miles can keep an account current. Or get a credit card that offers the ability to transfer miles to multiple programs, and make a note on Jan. 1 or some other date to annually feed miles into dormant accounts so you don’t lose your whole holding.

There are lots of other strategies – share what works for you in comments. Most of all, check all your accounts and make sure you aren’t in danger of giving your miles back to an airline.

Something else had to be distracting them, right?

And so David Letterman Monday night offered the Top Ten Northwest Airlines Pilot Excuses on CBS. (Here’s a link to the video.)

10. Bunch of fat guys seated on the right side of the plane made us vector east.
9. We get paid by the hour.
8. Mapquest always takes you the long way, am I right, people?
7. Tired of that show-off Sullenberger getting all the attention.
6. You try steering one of those airplanes after eight or nine cocktails.
5. Wanted to catch the end of the in-flight movie.
4. Activating autopilot and making occasional P.A. announcements is exhausting.
3. According to our map, we only missed our target by half an inch.
2. For a change, we decided to send luggage to the right city and lose the passengers.
1. Thought we saw balloon boy.

Feel free to add your own excuse in comments!

In some ways, the latest update from the National Transportation Safety Board about Northwest Airlines Flight 188 from San Diego to Minneapolis confirms the worst fears: The pilots just plain weren’t paying a lick of attention to flying the airplane.

The NTSB interviewed both pilots, both experienced aviators, who overflew MSP last week and said the captain and first officer say they had laptop computers out and were deep in discussion of a new crew scheduling system launched by Northwest’s parent, Delta Air Lines. The first officer was showing the captain how the new system worked, and neither were listening to radio transmissions or even glancing at airplane instruments or messages from company dispatchers.

“Both said they lost track of time,” the NTSB said in its statement.

Neither pilot was aware of the plane’s position, some 100 miles past their destination, until a flight attendant called and asked when they would land. “The captain said, at that point, he looked at his primary flight display for an ETA and realized that they had passed MSP. They made contact with ATC (air-traffic control) and were given vectors back to MSP,” the NTSB said in a statement.

Neither pilot said he was fatigued, and they’d had a 19-hour layover in San Diego before Flight 188, their first flight of the day. The NTSB noted that use of personal laptop computers in the cockpit is a violation of company policy.

The Airbus A320’s cockpit voice recorder captured only 30 minutes, including time on the ground, and the recording began when the plane was on final approach. The investigation will continue–the safety board said it is interviewing flight attendants and other company personnel.

There’s an old saying in aviation: “Flying can be hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.” Automation can make flying a jet a boring task — set the autopilot and all you have to do is change radio frequencies as you cross the country.  Automation has made air travel safer, but complacency in the cockpit will lead to accidents.

It’s worth remembering that the industry is the sum of its parts, and the parts can be very different. So it went with third-quarter earnings. Some were not so bad, considering the deep recession. Others were downright ugly. And the gap between the winners and losers was large.

On the plus side, Alaska Air Group, jetBlue Airways and AirTran Airways all recorded profits. Alaska stood way out, with a quarterly profit of $88 million and an operating margin of a healthy 16.5%. Alaska saw a smaller drop in unit revenue than its peers—the airline has little exposure to overseas routes that have been hit hard by the deep recession. Maybe these numbers are a sign that good service wins when money’s tight.

jetBlue, AirTran and Southwest, which recorded a small loss of $16 million, generally do well in recessions when travelers look harder for value. The relative lack of long-haul international routes also helps those carriers.

At the other end of the spectrum, AMR Corp., parent of American Airlines and American Eagle, turned in the worst quarter. By far.

AMR had a net loss of $359 million—worse than the net losses at Delta, United, Continental, Southwest and US Airways combined. The big loss included $94 million in charges for grounding aircraft. American was the only major airline to have an operating loss in the quarter—and it came after the airline filled a record-high percentage of its seats with passengers.

American, Delta, United and Continental all saw revenue decline about 20%. But Delta, United and Continental were still able to scratch out positive operating margins around 2%. American has higher costs than its peers, and so the airline had significant losses even though its planes were nearly full. It cost American 12.29 cents to fly one seat one mile in the third quarter. Delta’s mainline flew each seat one mile for 10.54 cents; United’s mainline unit cost was 11.09 cents and Continental was at 10.41 cents.

The good news for American is that it did a lot of financing – pre-selling $1 billion worth of frequent flier miles and other borrowing – and has more than $4 billion in unrestricted cash to carry it through the winter.

Bottom line: There’s big variation in how airlines are performing these days.

This week’s Middle Seat looks at modern oceanic air-traffic control systems, which provide a glimpse of the kind of change we expect to happen over land. The need for satellite-based navigation and data-link communications was far greater over oceans, and so we’ve seen modernization there first.

It’s long been an interest of mine. In 2000, I traveled to Australia and New Zealand for a story that focused on how far behind the U.S. was. Both those nations built spiffy oceanic air-traffic control systems, while a U.S. contract failed miserably. (The story yielded one of my all-time favorite quotes, from a Qantas Airways captain who headed the airline’s regulatory affairs: “It’s the U.S. that has dragged the chain.”)

Nine years ago, we were writing about how the Federal Aviation Administration had botched modernization. And today the U.S. is still playing catch-up. To catch up on oceanic systems, the U.S. picked the New Zealand system and had Lockheed Martin super-size it.

But there has been some progress. Over oceans, 100-mile separation requirements between planes have been reduced to as little as 30 miles, if planes have the proper equipment. Airlines get to design their own routes over the Pacific based on the latest data on winds and temperatures. Flights are shorter and smoother — more planes can seek the best altitudes.

Over land, widespread improvement is still several years away, but programs are moving forward and some innovations are being put into service. Government and industry experts say the FAA is doing better at modernization, but still has a long, long way to go.

The success of oceanic systems shows the promise of next-generation air-traffic control systems. Someday, we may enjoy improvements. But that someday has been long delayed.

Delta Flight 60 from Rio de Janeiro to Atlanta touched down at 6:05 a.m. EDT on Taxiway M, a two-mile-long strip of concrete parallel to Runway 27 Right at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The plane carried 182 passengers and 11 crewmembers, and there were no injuries.

Fortunately, Taxiway M was clear of planes and vehicles when the Boeing 767 landed. It was active at the time of the incident.

Delta says the pilots involved have been put on leave pending the investigations.

The NTSB, which has long made runway safety a major thrust, said a check airman (management pilot who evaluates pilots) was on the flight deck along with the captain and first officer, but during cruise flight the check airman became ill. A medical emergency was declared, but the crew decided to continue to Atlanta.

The flight was cleared to land on runway 27R, according to NTSB. At the time, it was dark (before sunrise) and the runway lights for 27R were illuminated. The localizer and approach lights which lead to the runway were not illuminated, the NTSB said in a statement. Taxiways are outlined in blue lights and runways in white lights.