Huge difference. Deviating from a flight plan, even majorly, is orders of magnitude less dangerous than glancing at your phone on the highway. Airspace is really big, and flying into area outside their flight path is so unlikely to hurt anyone as to be laughable.

The ballsy part that deserves respect is pushing the envelope on safety, executing perfectly, and playing it off like it's nothing.

> Deviating from a flight plan, even majorly, is orders of magnitude less dangerous than glancing at your phone on the highway.

No. These safety margins are expensive and they are there for a reason. Airliners don't expect a f-ing rocket to shoot by and just the air disturbances caused by it can seriously hurt or kill people.

> The ballsy part that deserves respect is pushing the envelope on safety, executing perfectly, and playing it off like it's nothing.

It does not deserve respect because it risked the safety of other people. I'd agree fully if all they risked was their live, but this way, it's exactly like going 250 km/h on a limited freeway - you're putting the lives of other people at risk and that's not cool.

>These safety margins are expensive and they are there for a reason.

Maybe I missed it in the article but did they elaborate on exactly where they strayed?

The White Sands Missile Range is really quite large, even for restricted military airspace standards. I would assume they would have to really go off course in order to appreciably put people at risk, the irresponsibility notwithstanding.

It was an altitude variation, it didn't stray from the accepted longitude and latitude. It also didn't leave the cleared airspace.

> It does not deserve respect because it risked the safety of other people

That's correct, it didn't endanger anyone else.

> The ballsy part that deserves respect is pushing the envelope on safety, executing perfectly, and playing it off like it's nothing.

None this competent happened in the story though, so unsure the relevance