Two pilots have told United States investigators that they were going over schedules using their laptop computers in violation of company policy while their Air- bus passenger jet overflew their Minneapolis, Minnesota, destination by 240 kilometers, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
The Northwest Airlines pilots—Richard Cole, the first officer, and Timothy Cheney, the captain—said in interviews conducted during the weekend that they were not fatigued and did not fall asleep, the board said in a statement.
Instead, Cole and Cheney told investigators that they both had their laptops out while the first officer, who had more experience with scheduling, instructed the captain on monthly flight crew scheduling.
The pilots were out of commUnication with air traffic controllers and their airline for more than an hour and didn’t realize their mistake until contacted by a flight attendant, the board said. By then, Northwest Flight 188 with its 144 passengers and five crew members was over Wisconsin, a neighboring state to Minnesota, continuing to cruise at 11,100 meters.
Many aviation safety experts had said it was more plausible that the pilots had fallen asleep during the cruise phase of their flight last Wednesday night than that they had become so focused on a conversation that they lost awareness of their surroundings for such a lengthy period of time. Air traffic controllers in Denver and Minneapolis repeatedly tried without success to raise the pilots of the San Diego-to-Minneapolis flight by radio. Other pilots in the vicinity tried reaching the plane on other radio frequencies. Their airline tried contacting them using a radio text message that chimes.
Authorities became so alarmed that National Guard jets were readied for takeoff at two locations and the White House Situation Room alerted senior White House officials, who monitored Northwest Flight 188 -can its 1-4 passengers and five crew members as the Airbus A320 flew across a broad swath of the mid-continent completely out of contact with anyone on the ground.
“It’s inexcusable,” said former NTSB Chair Jim Hall. “I feel sorry for the individuals involved, but this was certainly not an innocuous event—this was a significant breath of aviation safety and aviation security”.
The Delta pilots union pointed out that at no time were the passengers, crew or aircraft in danger, and cautioned against a “rush to judgment”. “I strongly encourage all parties not to reach a hasty conclusion,” Capt. Lee Moak, chair of Delta’s pilots’ union, said in the statement issued late Monday.