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 ...
....due to a failure of a chain of events,...
&&&&&
It is never just one fault, but a series of events where each person involved in the chain thinks they can just ignore the “little” deviation from normal.
NTSB ADVISORY
. National Transportation Safety Board Washington, DC 20594
. October 26, 2009
. NTSB ISSUES UPDATE ON ITS INVESTIGATION OF FLIGHT 188 THAT OVERFLEW INTENDED MINNEAPOLIS AIRPORT
. In its continuing investigation of an Airbus A320 that overflew the Minneapolis-St Paul International/Wold- Chamberlain Airport (MSP), the National Transportation Safety Board has developed the following factual information:. On Wednesday, October 21, 2009, at 5:56 pm mountain daylight time, an Airbus A320, operating as Northwest Airlines (NWA) flight 188, became a NORDO (no radio communications) flight at 37,000 feet. The flight was operating as a Part 121 flight from San Diego International Airport, San Diego, California (SAN) to MSP with 144 passengers, 2 pilots and 3 flight attendants.
. Both pilots were interviewed separately by NTSB investigators yesterday in Minnesota. The following is an overview of the interviews:
. *.... The first officer and the captain were interviewed for over 5 hours combined.
*.... The Captain, 53 years old, was hired in 1985.. His total flight time is about 20,000 hours, about 10,000 hours of A-320 time of which about 7,000 was as pilot in command.
*.... The First Officer, 54 years old, was hired in 1997.. His total flight time is about 11,000 hours, and has about 5,000 hours on the A-320.
*.... Both pilots said they had never had an accident, incident or violation.
*.... Neither pilot reported any ongoing medical conditions.
*.... Both pilots stated that they were not fatigued... They were both commuters, but they had a 19-hour layover in San Diego just prior to the incident flight. Both said they did not fall asleep or doze during the flight.
*.... Both said there was no heated argument.
*.... Both stated there was a distraction in the cockpit.
*....The pilots said there was a concentrated period of discussion where they did not monitor the airplane or calls from ATC even though both stated they heard conversation on the radio. Also, neither pilot noticed messages that were sent by company dispatchers.. They were discussing the new monthly crew flight scheduling system that was now in place as a result of the merger. The discussion began at cruise altitude. *.... Both said they lost track of time.
*.... Each pilot accessed and used his personal laptop computer while they discussed the airline crew flight scheduling procedure. The first officer, who was more familiar with the procedure was providing instruction to the captain.. The use of personal computers on the flight deck is prohibited by company policy.
*.... Neither pilot was aware of the airplane's position until a flight attendant called about 5 minutes before they were scheduled to land and asked what was their estimated time of arrival (ETA).. 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 and were given vectors back to MSP.
*.... At cruise altitude - the pilots stated they were using cockpit speakers to listen to radio communications, not their headsets.
*.... When asked by ATC what the problem was, they replied "just cockpit distraction" and "dealing with company issues".
*.... Both pilots said there are no procedures for the flight attendants to check on the pilots during flight..
. The Safety Board is interviewing the flight attendants and other company personnel today.. Air traffic control communications have been obtained and are being analyzed. Preliminary data from the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) revealed the following:
. *.... The CVR recording was 1/2 hour in length.
*.... The cockpit area microphone channel was not working during this recording.. However, the crew's headset microphones recorded their conversations.
*.... The CVR recording began during final approach, and continued while the aircraft was at the gate.
*.... During the hours immediately following the incident flight, routine aircraft maintenance provided power to the CVR for a few minutes on several occasions, likely recording over several minutes of the flight.
. The FDR captured the entire flight which contained several hundred aircraft parameters including the portion of flight where there was no radio communication from the flight crew.. Investigators are examining the recorded parameters to see if any information regarding crew activity during the portion of flight where radio contact was lost can be obtained..
. The Safety Board's investigation continues. .
You posted, in part: Frankly, I think they screwed themselves...
***
I think you may be on to something... I wonder what their wives have to say about what happened...
15 to 20 minutes to go 150 miles... hmmm... what might preoccupy someone, or two people, for that amount of time???
Yes, “They screwed themselves” is a pun, but I honestly did not mean it that way.
I meant that I think they screwed themselves legally and professionally because they chose a story for which there is no excuse for a professional pilot.
It was in 1972... an Eastern Airlines L-1011 wide body. It was the classic (and tragic) example of worring about the wrong malfunction. I recall it well because at the time, I flew Eastern often into Miami on L-1011s.
I would say he's correct!!
Plenty of excuses, but not much opportunity for 2nd chances once an 'ooops' gets publicized this broadly. Most 'ooops' don't get this much publicity.
The reality is that even though these guys made a serious mistake, no one was injured and no one was really in any danger of being injured.
In some ways, I feel bad for the pilots.
A commercial pilot's October 24 take on events from his outstanding blog site Flight Level 390 on the day to day rigors of flight ops and company politics:
Uh-Oh... Where Are We?
"I was working on another post, but decided to comment on the recent ruckus caused by an A320 that apparently overflew it's destination by, allegedly, 150 miles before turning back to the airport.
Thank you Lord that I was not the captain on that aircraft. Whew! Missed another bullet. I have no idea what happened on that flight deck, nor will I postulate about it. I saw one of the pilots on a mainstream media report (BIG MISTAKE!) denying that they were sleeping or arguing, so that points to a third possibility, I guess.
To the flying or, for that matter, the non-flying public, this incident surely seems mighty strange, but it has happened many times since the beginning of air carrier operations back in the late 1920s. Airline pilots, also, have landed at the wrong airport many times, landed on taxiways instead of runways hundreds, no, thousands of times, landed on the wrong runway countless times, and the list goes on.
Any airline pilot who has been at this game long enough has lost contact with ATC numerous times. Usually dispatch contacts the crew by email, or in the days before email, by company frequency.
To this point in my career, I have not (knock on wood) landed at the wrong airport, on the wrong runway, or overflown my destination.
Unfortunately, this incident will probably lead to more regulations on top of the suffocating layers of regs we currently work under. Not wanting to criticize without offering a solution, I fall back on my idea of Ameriflot, an Americanized version of the old Soviet air carrier, Aeroflot. We need a PCO (political correctness officer) sitting behind the comrade captain and an RCO (regulation compliance officer) sitting in the middle jump seat helping the crew navigate the maze of rules and regulations governing every flight.
Life on the Line continues...
I'm not an airline pilot, but I agree that 90 minutes does not pass my smell test. I could see them nodding for a few seconds or so just like most of us have done while driving and then waking in a panic. The best I can do as a passenger on a Red Eye with the cabin lights turned down, is 15 or so minutes of shut-eye at a clip. Every little bump reminds me that I'm not in bed, but in a tin can at 35,000 feet traveling at 600 mph. Not a place to rest easy.
I never understood how some people can get into a deep sleep on a flight. Maybe they just drink more booze before takeoff than me. ;~))
I started reading that and said hey, that sounds familiar, then I realized why. That was posted on Flyertalk by ME.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/12700961-post229.html
But none of them are acceptable.
You fly the airplane first. Everything else is secondary.
No, no one got hurt, but if they had the minimum fuel required for an IFR flight, it could have turned into a disaster.
I don’t know what the filed alternate was. I flew into MSP many times but my alternate would hardly have been adequate for a Airbus.
But as you well know, in some parts of the world you can file an alternate only 50 or 75 miles from the destination and be assured that it is gold plated because of the differences in terrain, prevailing winds, etc.
Which means that one could have very little fuel on board after reaching the original destination and still be legal to the alternate. But at the same time, it would leave none for screwing around.
x pounds to the destination, x pounds for a 15 minute flight to the alternate plus 45 minutes would leave no fuel for wandering aimlessly.
By the way, the FBI and many other large crime labs can look at those laptops and determine what they were doing and even whether they were in operation.
It would be interesting.
They weren’t even in the plane during the 90 minute period. They were abducted by space aliens and before being sent back to the plane, their memories were scrubbed of the experience.
From what I have gathered from reading and a pilot friend is that the FAA didn’t contact the military until the aircraft actually overflew MSP. So then they made the notification, F-16’s of the Wisconsin ANG were ready to go but in that 15-20 min period of notification and the planes getting ready to go up they got in contact with the NW aircraft so they had the ANG stand down. So that means they left Denver center airspace and made no contact with MSP approach, MSP tower, anyone, but no one realized it or did anything until they actually overflew MSP. It’s the breakdown in the chain of communication.
I don’t know where you get such crazy information.
They were in the cockpit.
What happened was that the aliens took their brains for examination to see if earthlings can be programmed. They removed the brains and took them to the mother ship where they were examined.
They put their brains back after the tests were completed.
That is why they can’t remember what happened and had to come up with the laptop story.
As a matter of fact, their brains must have been damaged in the test, otherwise they would have come up with a better excuse than playing with laptops.
I cut the info to read later then couldn't remember where I got it.
Great insight you put out.
I was in a heated argument about company policy and lost situational awareness...
I was engrossed doing stuff on my laptop....
That will not work...pilots stole my thunder.
I wonder if they really did have aircraft ready to go. With all the budget constraints I was be concerned there's really no ‘on alert’ units in the heartland. When you think of a situation requiring them to scramble fighters you have a movie plot picture in your mind of pilots just sitting around in a ready room somewhere shooting pool and watching TV, just waiting for the klaxon horn to sound. But in real life, it takes quite a few people to get a fighter off the ground, and it's even more daunting if everyone is home, asleep and must be called in. That could take at least an hour.
Well I wouldn’t have gotten the insight if it wasn’t for my pilot buddy filling me in on some stuff. He pretty much nailed most of it I think which is why they got their tickets yanked today. He is flying today or I would call and see if he had anymore info on this.
Thanks for the link.
I read it. I remembered the lesson well, but I had forgot some of the interesting details.
I did recall that one of the crew members was below the flight deck but I had forgot that he was trying to get a visual on the nose gear. I had remembered him as working on the electricals.
Thanks.
Hard to believe it was 37 years ago.
Well apparently by the FAA got around to calling NORAD or whoever they do and NORAD alerting the base, I think they were ready rather quick. If it is true that MSP called after they overflew MSP, and contact was made 15 mins later with NW, if you add in the time it took for FAA to call NORAD, NORAD to alert the base and get the pilots out , figure min 5 mins for all that. From what I have heard and understand the pilots were in the F-16’s and getting ready to go when they made contact with the NW plane. So that would mean they had 10 mins or so to get suited up if they were not, and pilots and crew out to the F-16’s and they were ready to go, I think 10 mins from call to ready to go isn’t too bad.
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