Giggity
Posted on 10/27/2009 5:39:04 PM PDT by SloopJohnB
The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday revoked the licenses of the two Northwest Airlines pilots who overshot their Minneapolis destination by 150 miles.
The pilots — Timothy Cheney of Gig Harbor, Wash., the captain, and Richard Cole of Salem, Ore., the first officer — told safety investigators they were working on their personal laptop computers and lost track of time and place.
The pilots, who were out of communications with air traffic controllers for 91 minutes, violated numerous federal safety regulations in the incident last Wednesday night, the FAA said in a statement. The violations included failing to comply with air traffic control instructions and clearances and operating carelessly and recklessly, the agency said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
There's a joke here about stewardesses, terrorism, and the emplacement of an IUD but I can't quite put the pieces together.
Giggity
Agree completely, but some people will always be longing for the ‘bigger story...’
This wasn’t the first time a crew fell asleep and it won’t be the last. The “I was training on Delta software” reeks of a self-sympathetic coverup.
Unless they hadn’t turned into the right frequency.
You don't if you're flying a plane on which *I* am a passenger. (/ sarc) But this latest twist doesn't add up.
I don't know. I had my share of early morning flights to some business meeting (or racetrack!) and then a flight home after I was done. I was never close to falling asleep. Even when nothing is going on, which is a lot of the time, there's stuff going on.
ML/NJ
They would still be doing the navigation.
Though I have no doubt that some people are just better at it (staying awake) than others, I guess.
Me, I could never be a long haul trucker or pilot.
I’d be dead before the first week was out from nodding off at the wheel.
Of course they were asleep, but the real question is whether the passengers will get those extra FF miles.
I guess that would include time before and after they passed their destination. For the record, I haven’t seen that report. I’m an airline pilot and the consensus is that they were asleep. That’s the only logical explanation. But being asleep for 90 minutes? That’s hard to believe.
Maybe they were freepin’!
Mile High Club.
re: flying away from some point on a 205 degree heading instead of the 250 degree heading I was assigned
Ah yes, the words you NEVER want to hear from ATC, “State your intentions!” And they always say it in such an accusatory tone, like they just know you’ve screwed up and want you to ‘fess up right then and there!
Food for thought about the ATC's from a few days ago, especially items 2 and 3: I talked to an acquaintance who is a WN pilot. He says this incident is talk of pilots everywhere. what I got from him is this.
1) Him and every pilot he knows and has talked to all believe the crew was asleep. Maybe it was their last trip of the day and they were worn out, he doesn't know but he believes 100% it was zzz time.
2) The reports of the MSP tower telling a crew to change freqs and the report an FA called up and woke the crew are false from what he has heard from guys who were in the area and heard all this.. He says MSP tower were telling pilots the crew was handed over from Denver so the tower and everyone else was assuming they were on another center freq or MSP approach and that's where they were looking for him. He says that a pilot or a crew who were approaching MSP from the east and were only a few miles from the plane, on their own got a hunch and switched over to Denver center freq and after repeated calls raised the crew who sounded "out of it". That far away from Denver center they would not have heard Denver talking. This pilot, after hearing them say he was handed over but no one saying he actually made the switch checked on his own. Either way it pretty much looks like they were asleep since Denver centers airspace and never made the switch over since they were reached on Denver's freq. That raises the question of why did Denver not notice the crew didn't acknowledge the freq change. Why did MSP wait until the plane had flown 150 miles past MSP to ask someone to check Denver's freq? I believes that shows that maybe someone in Denver didn't admit of not getting an acknowledgment of freq channge until then. I would love to hear the tape of Denver center handing them off and seeing if there was an answer. If they answered then we know that's why Denver didn't worry but then that begs the question of why they were still on Denver's freq and never changed.
3) My pilot friend cannot believe how long they let this go on without Denver, MSP, someone not doing more or alerting other centers and aircraft much sooner about a wayward aircraft out of contact just cruising along. He believes this will also lead to some controllers being called in on the carpet and fired. As with many aircraft incidents it seems this went on and on and due to a failure of a chain of events, Denver not getting the acknowledgment and not doing something sooner, MSP approach not saying something sooner. etc. Of course there is alot we do not know yet so no one should jump to conclusions.
Like I said this is mostly hearsay, he heard a majority from other pilots who were in and around MSP and heard this first hand but you know how stories can change. But he adds and it sounds like common sense, that if they were in a heated discussion, unless they took their headsets off they still should have heard something from Denver for a while until they were out of earshot and what kind of professional pilots could be soo distract by a "heated conversation" that they wouldn't at least once realize they hand not talked to ATC on over an hour and where they were. Sadly he believes the CVR will show nothing as they were coming back to MSP and talking on their way back for over 30 mins so all the time out of contact was overwritten. He does say though that there may be a way to pull some of the overwritten data up but who knows. He says this situation is just more proof though of how over crowded and out of date the ATC system is. He truly believes this should have been caught much sooner....
They were out of contact for an hour and a half, not just during the time they were beyond their destination.
I suspect one reason there wasn’t more alarm on the ground was that their transponder was still squawking and their course did not change unexpectedly. In most hijack situation they disable the transponder right away.
But I am surprised they didn’t send a military plane up to get a look at the aircraft and see if there was anything obviously amiss. I would have expected them to be sending someone out to take a look pretty quickly after contact was lost, and especially when they deviated from their IFR clearance.
It will all come out sooner or later. I can’t imagine ANY scenario that will turn out OK for these pilots. Expect maybe they were part of a TSA test of the system to see what ATC would do under the circumstances. And I don’t see that as very likely.
There are a whole bunch of curious things about that flight that those of us interested enough in aviation to actually know a few facts can't help wondering about.
Was the flight on autopilot? Isn't it normal procedure to reduce cruising speed and begin descending a half hour before reaching the destination?
Shouldn't the speed for that last hour been closer to 300 Kt than 400 Kt?
All this suggests that they were "out of contact a lot longer than 40 minutes.
I just hope that the flight recorder has data for longer than the cockpit voice recorder did, and that the final NTSB and FAA incident reports have more credible explanations.
And for those who think you can't while flying, I knew a very good charter pilot who fell asleep flying a Beech BE95 (Travel Air) back in the 1960’s and went in a parking lot somewhere in Maryland. High speed, straight in.
There have been many many incidents, some fatal, some serious and some funny regarding pilots falling asleep.
Frankly, I think they screwed themselves because there is an excuse for falling asleep and they might have salvaged their careers, although been demoted, but playing with laptops?
That is inexcusable. You will recall that early on in your career it was drummed into your head that above all else, fly the airplane. Everything else is #2 or lower on the list. Even communications with air traffic control, important as they are, do not take precedence over flying the airplane.
Weather radar, setting way points, sick passengers,...a pilot has lots of potential distractions that must not be allowed to break rule #1...fly the airplane.
And those who do not follow that rule end up decorating the landscape with aluminum. One of the most outstanding examples of what happens to those who do not is the story of an aircraft, I forget what...seems like a Connie, back in the early sixties or maybe even earlier that flew into the FL swamps because the crew was obsessing over replacing a landing gear warning light. They thought the aircraft was on auto pilot but they did not have altitude hold engaged and it slowly descended into the swamp.
My point is that they knowingly and intentionally, if their story is true which I doubt, violated the most important rule in aviation: FLY THE AIRPLANE comes first.
So they should be terminated for either breaking that rule or lying.
I am confident that being deaf has a bearing on that statement.
I remember hearing that they were tuned to Denver Center enroute. Maybe they missed the call or forgot to change freqs to MSP approach.
They were either sleeping or spooning each other.
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