Posted on 10/25/2009 9:59:16 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Mystery deepens over what distracted pilots on plane that overshot by 150 miles
The mystery of the Northwest Airlines plane that overshot Minneapolis by 150 miles has deepened after the first officer insisted that he and the pilot were not asleep or arguing.
By Philip Sherwell in New York
Published: 6:39PM BST 24 Oct 2009
The mystery of the Northwest Airlines plane that overshot Minneapolis by 150 miles has deepened after the first officer insisted that he and the pilot were not asleep or arguing. Pilots on the Northwest Airlines plane that overshot Minneapolis by 150 miles will not say what they were doing Photo: AP
Richard Cole refuted two explanations put forward for the strange case of NW flight 188 when the cockpit crew was out of radio contact for more than an hour after flying past Minneapolis, their final stop on Wednesday evening.
"Nobody was asleep in the cockpit. No arguments took place," Mr Cole told a local television station from his home in Oregon. "But other than that, I cannot tell you anything that went on because we're having hearings this weekend, we're having hearings on Tuesday. All that information will come out then."
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Now they are denying that.
So I was wondering how they are explaining this now.
don’t rule out involvement by the religion of peace (tm)...
Yeah, my money is on something sex-related.
Usual bad reporting! Does anybody say anything about complaints on the late touchdown - such as passengers and other grew members? SOMEBODY must have looked out the window and said, “Wasn’t that Minn-St. Paul we just passed?” Or, “Were we supposed to land 20 mins ago?”
The AlQada Langoliers have claimed responsibility.
i was thinking the same. thats why the radio was off.
texting while flying?
as the recorder won’t show it, it’ll be just their word on it. therefore... i’d bet sex related
They were out of contact before they got to the airport.
Good luck....we’re all counting on you.
What we should be aware of is that MANY people were not paying attention...and no one was doing anything. A disaster waiting to happen.
All those passengers and no one noticed "THE TIME" or a landmark???
Sex...An hour??? Must have bought her dinner first!!
The Mile High Club. Bingo... and flight attendants were where?
Where are the FA’s statements, unless they were in on it.
Thank goodness no one had the fish.
OMG!
You’re bad!
lol!
My considered opinion is that they (the pilots) miss-entered the destination and route number (enroute waypoints associated with this flight p[lan) in their flight management computer (FMC) and thought they were flying to a different airport. Typically, this is a joint checklist item for both pilots to confirm destination and route of flight and proper FMC entry.)
To complicate the matter, I think they missed a radio change and didn’t respond very quickly to the silence on freq. Ergo, no prompts from ATC. Bad combination of errors.
Once they were back in radio contact, they were informed of their deviation and then had to do an enroute change of destination and a re-entry of waypoints in their FMC to return to MSP. That takes a little bit of time, as it isn’t a task that is done very often. It’s only performed during reroutes and/or and diverts, which are actually pretty rare.
I think this is the only plausible explanation. If the pilot flies past his “clearance-limit” ( as in the destination entered in the FMC) and the aircraft is on autopilot, the autopilot will disengage. This would be accompanied by aural warnings and flashing lights. It would have been the attention-getter that these guys didn’t get.
IMHO.
What was happening in the control tower?
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