Ground Zero for a hijacked Northwest Flight 188 ??
Posted on 10/28/2009 11:06:04 AM PDT by gandalftb
Armed F-16s from the Wisconsin Air National Guard were on the runway and could have shot down the errant Northwest flight, officials said today.
"As a force of last resort, NORAD is always prepared to do whatever is necessary," NORAD spokesperson Mike Kucharek told ABCNews.com.
Air traffic controllers feared Northwest Flight 188, might have been hijacked after its pilots failed to respond to radio transmissions for more than an hour.
Air traffic controllers reported the pilots initially failed to respond to commands as it passed from the air space controlled by the FAA Denver Center into the area controlled by the Minneapolis Center.
The concern grew as the pilots ignored a command from the Minneapolis approach controllers to begin a descent for landing.
The National Counterterrorism Center in Washington was notified, and authorities began to scrutinize the passenger list, according to Pierre Thomas and Jason Ryan of ABC News.
Once contact was re-established, after an hour and 18 minutes of silence, the controllers ordered the pilots to carry out a series of zigzag maneuvers in order to prove "the pilots had command and control of the craft,".
Controllers tried used a variety of FAA frequencies, the Northwest private frequency and texting services to contact the plane.
The pilots finally responded when contacted by the Denver controllers—-an indication they had not changed frequencies on their radios when they passed into the Minneapolis air space.
The pilots had to be asked three times if they were okay and had control of the plane.
The pilots said they had a "cockpit distraction" and were having a "heated discussion" about a "company issue,".
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Nothing new here.
In all the travels I had to do, which was considerable at one time, Northworst was the only airline to lose my luggage.
I also hated having to have a stop over in the Minneapolis airport, their hub, as it is a crappy facility and I seemed to always have to go from one extreme end of the concourse to the other to get to my connecting flights.
About 20 minutes.
Long enough to ask what was going on.
“Why haven’t the pilots’ laptops been confiscated so tests can be carried out on them to determine if the pilots are telling the truth?”
Do you really want the FAA to send the FBI out to see what sort of porn they were looking at?
“They had to intentionally ignore the radio calls, unless they were, in fact, incapacitated.....”
So if they were sleeping, the government can advise pilots not to sleep. If they were chatting online, the government can advise pilots not to chat online. What’s the difference? In any case, they should be fired.
The story makes it pretty clear they were using some form of an internet system on the laptop to access pilot flight records.
Frankly I want to know why it’s okay for the pilots to do that when the passengers are forbidden to do so because “it could interfere with the plane’s communications.”
It has been known for years all that is a bunch of crap.
I could use a GPS or surf the net in a plane and it will not impact the plane’s communication system at all....
It’s all one big lie.
Thanks for the info. That’s what I would have thought. I mess around with flight simulator, and it has all kinds of bells and whistles on it, especially on auto pilot.
half an hour or so
Well the KFI expert was wrong
These yokels most v=certainly should and have lost their tickets
I had the same, rather distasteful, thought.
Yes, if you’re on the right radio frequency.
My take on it is that these aircraft are probably traveling about 400 mph. I think it would be about 20 minutes or a bit more. 450 mph would be exactly 20 minutes.
assuming no head winds blah blah blah about half an hour ( and certainly 20 mins fits that) still too long and they ignored repeated attempts at contact
I don’t think he was. I do think they deserved a two to four month sit down and to lose that pay. I don’t think they should lose their licenses.
He predicted that they would because of all the media hype. They did yesterday, although I don’t know the specific time frame, temporary vs forever.
Completely and utterly distasteful thought for sure. But it did cross my mind.
This guy does consulting for the airlines. He does training and is an expert witness at trials. He is rated to fly the specific aircraft these pilots were flying, and has flown them. He has something like 30,000 hours. He is ex-military and has a long career in the industry.
I have no reason to think he isn’t qualified to make the assessment he did.
His insights during the interview were quite informative, and his knowledge of the specific aircraft and controls was impressive.
Thats what I was thinking a well.
Somebody posted yesterday that it could have been a test. After thinking about it I wondered - yes, I know this is real tinfoil hat stuff - but remember when the Russians sprayed some terrorists with gas that put them to sleep? I'm wondering if somehow gas was released in the cockpit that caused the pilots to fall asleep. These are pilots with real clean records. Real tinfoil hat stuff.
My guess is that something really unusual happened in the last half hour of the flight. Since the cockpit door was locked, it probably wasn’t a terrorist trying to crash the plane. That leaves only one explantation: The pilots saw a UPO, reported it, and the air controllers were discussing it. But the pilots were ordered by the FAA to keep it quiet, and to overshoot the airport long enough to erase the black box recording. It’s so obvious, I don’t know why no one has figured this out.
Ground Zero for a hijacked Northwest Flight 188 ??
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