Napping on Northwest Airlines?

DollyPardonMe

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10-21-09
Federal officials say they're investigating whether pilot fatigue was a factor in an incident where a Northwest Airlines jet overshot its planned destination (the Minneapolis airport) by 150 miles. The plane, with 147 people aboard, landed safely yesterday evening after crew members discovered their mistake. Officials say the plane lost radio contact with controllers for about 45 minutes. The cockpit crew claim they were distracted during a discussion in the cockpit.

That's THEIR story and theyre sticking to it...LOL
Everyone else seems to think these pilots took a little nap and flew over their destination by 150 miles. I am SO terrified of flying I can't even take a nap... Nice to know the pilots can!
 
I don't think they were napping.... I think something else..., but my mind might be in the gutter. LOL!!!
 
Either way, for what we're being 'raped' by airlines to travel these days, this just pizzes me off.
 
I don't think they were napping.... I think something else..., but my mind might be in the gutter. LOL!!!

Mine got there right away on this one. However it involved possible hankypanky with female staff.
FAA will get to the bottom of it. Wait, that didn't sound right....
 
The older "black box" on this plane only records 30 minutes of cockpit noise (newer record 2 hours). The timeframe in question was not recorded.

Thus the pilots can say whatever excuses they want. And they (the pilots) know they will be fired anyway (as they should based upon lying and poor piloting).

We may never know for sure exactly what happened.
 
My mind was in the gutter as well, except for two things:

1) They flew for over an hour (78 minutes, IIRC) without making contact or acknowledging. There's not a man alive who is that absorbed for that long not to notice alarms and people calling them over the radio!

2) If that's really what they were doing, I would think they'd be so nervous about being caught that they'd never relax enough to lose track of time like that.

To be honest, the only thing that make's sense is that they both fell asleep. If they are anything like my husband and sons, the world could end and they wouldn't wake up!
 
http://www.kirotv.com/news/21411439/detail.html

I can't find the link to the actual video unless it was at the end of this clip but the co-pilot was interviewed in Salem Oregon last night on KIRO. He had such a smirk on his face, self-satisfied if you ask me. The quote below is from the AP via KIRO.

"We were not asleep; we were not having an argument; we were not having a fight," Cole told The Associated Press.

He would not discuss why it took so long for the pilots to respond to radio calls, "but I can tell you that airplanes lose contact with the ground people all the time. It happens. Sometimes they get together right away; sometimes it takes awhile before one or the other notices that they are not in contact."
BBM

I'm waiting for the jokes on Late Night... he didn't help his case at all...
 
They were working on their laptop computers? One pilot teaching another how to schedule? I'm guessing the computers will not be inspected.

This is as good an excuse as any.


Pilots
 
In other words, it sucks about as much as the others.

When they are in the cockpit they are supposed to fly the plane. They were not. That's the issue. From working on the schedule to slap & tickle with the FAs, they were not doing what they were supposed to be. Game over.

Coffee, tea, or me? LOL.

That was my first thought, when the pilots quoted as saying "Working on laptops". Working on laptops? Both of them? Isn't their "working" job to be flying the plane? The airline officals say this was against policy. They will be fired.

But no, this excuse isn't as sucky, IMO, as sleeping, sex or whatever. It will be forgotten quickier. They may even get another flying job as long as they promise to leave the laptops behind?

Too bad we will never know the true story.
 
Coffee, tea, or me? LOL.

That was my first thought, when the pilots quoted as saying "Working on laptops". Working on laptops? Both of them? Isn't their "working" job to be flying the plane? The airline officals say this was against policy. They will be fired.

But no, this excuse isn't as sucky, IMO, as sleeping, sex or whatever. It will be forgotten quickier. They may even get another flying job as long as they promise to leave the laptops behind?

Too bad we will never know the true story.

I thought I heard on CNN that the FAA wants their licenses.
 
I thought they had their licenses revoked.

This is a terrible story, and I'm usually not afraid of flying but this surely alarms me.

Something is awfully fishy about BOTH pilots not bothering to answer radio calls for 90 minutes.
 
Documents released today

The problem was that the captain, Timothy Cheney, and the first officer, Richard I. Cole, in the isolation of a hijack-proof cockpit, were glued to their laptops, puzzling over a new scheduling system.
“This was only supposed to take 10 minutes,” Mr. Cheney told investigators. “I was wrong,” he told them, to have “let another force come from outside and distract me.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/us/17pilot.html

I've had this happen to me - - not overshooting an airport but losing track of time on the computer. Probably they shouldn't allow laptops in the cockpit.
 

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