It is fairly common to lose contact with the center. If the controller is overworked and waits a little bit too late to turn you over and you are at the very edge of his area, and perhaps you have a radio that is not up to snuff, you don’t hear the call.
But airline pilots fly the same route over and over and can remember most frequencies without looking at the charts.
The closest I ever came to living like an airline pilot was back in the early 60’s when I had a daughter in the polio hospital at Warm Springs, GA.
For months and months, I flew every single Friday to Columbus, GA, back to GSO that night, back to Columbus Sunday morning and back to Greensboro
Sunday night.
I knew by heart every frequency and within a few miles of when I would be passed on to the next.
That experience makes it even more of a mystery.
When those guys lost Denver, they should have known to go to the next frequency.
I don’t think we have yet heard the truth of what happened on that flight.
Whether they lied or whether they quit flying the airplane, they should be fired. Either one is a reason for termination.
ping
I’d like to hear the transmissions on the handoff from Denver. Denver controller should have kept trying until he got an acknowledgement. I also wonder how long it took Minneapolis approach to realize the pilots wern’t with them after the handoff.