Posted on 10/26/2009 1:54:03 PM PDT by traumer
The latest in the case of the straying Northwest Airlines flight is that pilots have told the National Transportation Safety Board that they were working on their laptops, not sleeping, not arguing.
The Associated Press had this:
"National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement Monday that the pilots said in interviews that they were not fatigued and didn't fall asleep, as many aviation safety experts have said was likely.
"The board said the pilots told investigators the first officer was instructing the captain on monthly flight crew scheduling. The pilots were out of communication with air traffic controllers and their airline for over an hour and didn't realize their mistake until contacted by a flight attendant."
Adds the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
"The pilots said they were discussing the new monthly crew flight scheduling system that was in place because of the merger between Delta and Northwest. [First Officer Richard I.] Cole, who was more familiar with the procedure, was providing instruction to [Timothy B.] Cheney, the captain, the report said.
"'The use of personal computers on the flight deck is prohibited by company policy,' the report said."
(Excerpt) Read more at aviationblog.dallasnews.com ...
Yep, pull this crap in military aviation and you’re liable to end up a high-profile prisoner in some unfriendly place, if not a permanent part of its landscape.
Why is Bear Grylls using a computer?
They won't have to worry about that anymore!
I know that they put planes on automatic pilot, but, we still need actual human beings monitoring things, don’t we?
And I thought take off and landing were the toughest part of flying; the times when pilots need to devote their undivided attention to air traffic control instructions and getting into position and all that.
There may be more to the story, but, it hardly sets my mind at ease that they flew way past their target, and were out of communication with air traffic control, so they could be on a laptop checking schedules.
Maybe playing with a flight simulator...
This should be pretty easy to prove.
One is from the Seattle area. Could easily have been a ball gargling session.
That is my thought...there have been 2 or 3 different explanations. Something more was going on in the “cock-pit”
They said they were working on laptops. That could mean something else.
“Yeah, that’s the ticket!”
Bingo!
(or is that bungo?)
It means the flight attendants were giving them lap dances.
I haven't flown in a while, but when I was flying under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) which is the way every airline flight must fly, you had to have your radio on, and tuned to your assigned Air Traffic Control (ATC) frequency all the time. This is because ATC might at any time, amend your clearance (assigned route) and give you a different one. They may tell you to go higher, or lower, go off in a different direction, or enter a rather precise holding pattern. You cannot just turn the radio down or off because you find it annoying.
As soon as you deviate from your clearance, ATC lets you know it. I still remember making a mistake one day and flying away from some point on a 205 degree heading instead of the 250 degree heading I was assigned. It didn't take two minutes before the got on my case and got me back to where they wanted me to be.
And while you're listening to the radio, you hear the same thing happening to other flights being worked by ATC. Most of the time it is a commercial airliner that deviates because they see something on their weather radar and I guess they're afraid if they ask it they can deviate, they will be denied. So you hear ATC scold them and the pilot says something like "We're getting right back to it (The assigned flight path)."
I suppose this deviation could have been instigated by the FAA, or the FBI, to test the response of whatever systems they have in place to handle another aircraft takeover.
But this was a test.
ML/NJ
No, wait, we were discussing ways to make our airline, and the entire aviation industry safer and greener. And I showed the captian a picture of my girlfriend, Morgan Fairchild. Yea, that’s it.....
They can’t log in inflight (pretty sure about that) so whatever they were discussing would have had to be on the hard drive.
I’ve been known to lose an hour or two playing Civ IV.
They need to quit lying. They dozed off, and they know it.
They were having a mile high club meeting.
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