Falling Asleep At The Stick. Or Not.
Posted on October 28th, 2009 by Dave Stein
Because I’m a pilot, people have been asking me my opinion on the Northwest Airlines situation.
The facts:
- Two pilots flew an airliner with 144 passengers 150 miles past their planned destination.
- The pilots were out of radio contact for 91 minutes (revised from the 78 minutes originally reported).
- ATC (Air Traffic Control) tried a number of different ways to contact the pilots.
- The pilots said they were both distracted looking at a new crew scheduling package on their PCs when they were responsible for flying the plane.
- The pilots have 31,000 combined hours of flight time.
- The pilots have already lost their licenses. Their careers are ruined.
- No one was injured nor was any damage done to any property.
I don’t have any answers. I’m merely a private pilot, proudly coming up on 2,000 hours, not 20,000.
Not a single pilot I’ve spoken with could ever imagine a situation where they were out of contact with ATC for that long. So that prompts me to pose these questions:
- Since the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) has only a 30-minute loop, what happened before the plane reestablished radio communications has probably been overwritten. However, will the flight data recorder show any pilot inputs to any control systems during the 91 minutes in question? If the answer is no, one should not conclude the pilots were asleep. If the answer is yes, it probably means they were not.
- Is it possible that the pilots used the 30-minute CVR loop deliberately to cover what happened if their story about the scheduling software isn’t true? For example, realize what was recorded by CVR would be damaging, so extend the trip long enough so that the U-turn and flight back to the destination would be long enough to overwrite what had been recorded earlier?
- Were the pilots in fact sleeping, but agreed between them that saying they were using their PCs during flight would be considerably more acceptable to the public, the FAA, and perhaps Northwest (Delta) Airlines? I’m not accusing them of lying. Just posing the question, since there has already been an acknowledgment of a severe lack of judgment on the part of the pilots.
- Does the new crew scheduling system require connection to the Internet? If so, how did the pilots connect?
One other point: A lot of people (including pilots) complain about the FAA. I think they generally do a remarkable job. Since a critical communication process broke down, I trust they will get to the bottom of this and that actions will be taken to prevent this from happening again.
Photo source: NWA.com
Filed under: On the Road
