It takes about 15-20 minutes to travel the 150 miles they overshot. Some of that time would have been spent trying to contact the crew. If you want to hang ATC on the basis of that timeline go ahead but the fact is nothing happens instantaneously in the real world even if armchair generals wish otherwise.
The article-and every story I’ve seen- says “out of contact for 91 minutes”.
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.