Posted on 10/23/2009 4:53:30 AM PDT by Erik Latranyi
Many a person has missed their stop on a bus or train at one time or another because they were engrossed in a weighty conversation or a book.
But when the pilots of Northwest Airlines flight 188 became distracted it had more serious consequences as they overflew their Minneapolis destination by 150 miles.
"They were in a heated discussion over airline policy and they lost situational awareness," the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) explained.
When the pilots got their "situational awareness" back they turned the Airbus A320 around and landed it safely on Wednesday evening, apparently without any of the 144 passengers realising they had taken a roundabout route.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Take it.
Right on
Math question - If airplane “A” is flying at 490 KIAS, how many minutes will it take to fly 150 miles?
A) Your mother wears boots
B) The dog ate my homework
C) Less than 20 minutes
D) I don’t “do” math, try someone else....
I can see two boneheads arguing for 20 minutes. I do find it hard to understand how they missed so many radio calls.
In any case, their flying days are over. Too many other qualifed pilots that want that job.....
But, in one instance I watched the argument go for a full
“leg” (about 2 hours block time).
After landing, it continued while we exchanged pax (on a hard stand).
Then it continued as we taxied out. After take-off the tower politely said “Goodbye XXX, next time please ask for takeoff clearnce”. A lot of silence in the cockpit.
True story, but, it happened in a part of the world that was far, far away from the FAA.
No damage, no foul. s/off
It was a little hand held GPS unit for use by private pilots in unpressurized cabins. It incorporated a barometric altimeter, and the capability for the pilot to input a local reference altitude to account for variations in surface air pressure. Normally pilots can adjust their cabin altimeters to indicated the known altitude of the runway before take off to account for changes in local barometric pressure. Airliners are pressurized to about 8000 ft., which means that when you are flying at 30,000 feet a barometric altimeter inside the cabin with you will indicate 8000 ft.
Apparently, the pilots were off the air ( not responding to any tower ) for well over an hour while covering at least 600 miles.
Why F 16 were not scrambled is interesting ?
They fell asleep, all veteran pilots know that’s exactly what happened.
Lucky that they fell asleep over Wisconsin with their transponders on so that the tower could re-route other traffic.
Imagine if they were approaching Philly, then flew into NYC air space asleep for 600 miles.
Yikes, I don't think tower controllers should be polite about that sort of thing. Did this happen before or after Tenerife?
That’s their story and they are sticking to it! (sarcasm)
If they fell asleep they’re in even bigger trouble, because they told investigators they were having a heated discussion, and the voice recorder will tell the truth very quickly. I really doubt they were asleep, because they were certainly wide awake by the time they were explaining things to investigators on the ground, and they would have realized that any story they gave would be compared to the voice recorder.
I’ve been wondering about the flight attendants. There were 3 of them on this flight. Normally flight attendants are very aware of the flight schedule, because they need to finish drink service and trash pick-up before descent begins. How could it take so long for any of the flight attendants to notice that the “prepare for landing” procedure still hadn’t started, well after the time where the plane was supposed to be on the ground? And the passengers — usually there are a number of passengers on board who are very focused on landing time, due to needing to catch connecting flights, etc. I’m wondering if any of the flight attendants actually did notice the overshoot, or if one of them was alerted by a passenger who called the attendant over to inquire about why they weren’t descending yet.
You got it. As the flight progressed they would be talking to ATC and also handed off to Approach at Minneapolis. This did not happen I suspect. It did not happen because they probably missed the call as they were asleep.
Maybe all the flight attendants were in the cock pit?
Or the flight attendants are just as lackadaisical as the pilots and were have a gossip-fest in the galley, oblivious to the time.
I just saw the WSJ article saying there’s only 30 minutes of voice recording. The newer ones have 2 hours. Time to upgrade. The newer ones are probably smaller and lighter, and would save fuel.
I’m sure the pilots were indeed alerted by a flight attendant, but I still wonder if the only reason a flight attendant realized there was a problem was that a passenger alerted a flight attendant. I just can’t see how THREE flight attendants who weren’t involved in some inappropriate activity of their own, could all fail to realize that they were so long overdue to begin descent. The WSJ article also says “For a normal approach, the plane should have started slowing and descending as much as 30 minutes prior to touchdown.” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125631959748904273.html
Well, enter reality.
The last report I heard stated that the "state of the art" Air Bus did not have the "modern" two-hour CVR (cockpit voice recorder) but the 60s "tape" type on a 30-minute loop, so useful audio is not availabe to contradict the losers in the cockpit.
There should be two hour or longer voice recorders on every flight.
This flight apparently only had the 30 minute one.
The pilots got lucky as the time from waking up to the gate likely took up all of the 30 minutes as the snoring was written over.
Now that is funny.
But I think the answer is no.
Still doesn’t explain the three flight attendants not sending up a red flag much earlier. If they were all in the cockpit, we can pretty much rule out “sleeping” as what the merry fivesome was engaged in. And if they were out in the cabin where they belong, I’m sure some passengers would have noticed them all sleeping. Something odd was going here, because it sounds like the entire crew of 5 was completely unaware of what was going on with the flight.
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