Pilots of wayward jet lose licenses

[Subdivisions]

Source: CNN.com

Washington (CNN) -- The Federal Aviation Administration has revoked the licenses of the two Northwest Airlines pilots who overshot a Minnesota airport by 150 miles during a 78-minute period of radio silence last week.

Capt. Timothy B. Cheney, 53, and First Officer Richard I. Cole, 54, were piloting Northwest Flight 188 from San Diego, California, to the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport Wednesday when air traffic controllers lost radio contact with the Airbus A320 over the Denver, Colorado, area.

"The pilots were out of contact with air traffic controllers for an extended period of time and told federal investigators that they were distracted by a conversation," the FAA said.

"Air traffic controllers and airline officials repeatedly tried to reach them through radio and data contact, without success."



Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/27/airliner.fly.by/index.html

---

Well, it was bound to happen the minute they couldn't tell a story that made sense. They probably fell asleep. This is most likely devastating to them. But not nearly as devestating as crashing a plane they weren't paying attention to.

[WriteDown]

1. Good. nt

[DrDan]

2. well deserved . . . . it will be interesting to see if the union comes to their defense

and what argument they use.

[rsmith6621]

8. ALPA Will Let The Sink

They will not get involved on this one....those two are on their own.

[skepticscott]

66. All I've heard them say so far

is that no one should rush to judgement, and that the (ex) pilots deserve due process. But they had their due process during the hour that no one could contact them on the radio, and the union knew from the start that they were screwed.

[Scairp]

68. It was way more than an hour

It says 78 minutes, which is about 77 minutes longer than it should have taken one of them to realize the ATC were trying to contact them and that they had overflown the airport. Were they in there doing something together that didn't involve computers, if you all catch my drift? It makes no sense, unless they were both unconscience or both so sound asleep or doing each other so intensely they didn't consider that they were taking much too long to reach their destination. They got what they deserve, and IMO, they should face charges for potentially putting the passengers in danger. Their inattention to their job could have been catastrophic, not to mention that everyone on the ground was freaking out because this plane didn't respond for such a long period of time to the extensive attempts to contact them. Things like this always happens with Northwest, and I have never flown that airline because of those incidents, and some other things I've heard about them as well.

[trof]

83. What ever happened to 'Guard' channel?

35 year airline pilot here.
There were always at least 2 comm radios in cockpit and one was ALWAYS tuned to Guard channel.
Guard was used for emergencies and incidents like this one.
When you transmitted on Guard, any receiver within range would hear you.

So, what happened to Guard?

[Scairp]

90. Good question

I would imagine someone has asked that, and all questions regarding why they took so long to respond. If it had been five minutes or even ten minutes, they could have claimed "task saturation", but well over an hour? No way. They were doing something in there that caused them to either deliberately ignore all communication attempts or so engrossed in some "activity" that was too good to stop and answer the ground. We don't have to worry about these two morons anymore, but what if there are others just like them still flying planes? Since the door can no longer be opened from the outside, the pilots can pretty much do whatever they want in the cockpit and nobody is the wiser, until something like this happens.

[trof]

92. Plus, whenever it gets too quiet in the cockpit...

Back in my day (geezer) we had a flight engineer also, so there were 3 sets of ears and eyes.
If the radio ever went quiet for 10 or 15 minutes at least one of us would say "Uh, sure is quiet. Think we missed something?"
And we'd check in with center.
Sometime they were still there and it was just a quiet night.
Sometimes they weren't and we'd missed a frequency change.
We'd find one that worked and get back on with the proper sector.

[October]

3. Few professions are as swift at punishing...

Just saying.

[fujiyama]

82. I'm glad this is one of them

Any profession where people's lives are in your hands needs swift punishment for malpractice and negligence.

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

4. If they were playing Warcraft

I hope they leveled.

[kayakjohnny]

70. Funny one!

[Hepburn]

5. Good....

...if they cannot pay attention, they do not belong in charge of a passenger plane. PERIOD.

[sandyj999]

6. There is a hero like Sullenberger and then these jokers come along.

They have no business flying anything anywhere. This is what they deserve.

[Capn Sunshine]

7. Anyone else think this is what you get when you pay pilots less than 30k ?

The airline's attempts to make piloting a 30k job to save the 300k jobs of a few VPs may well bite them in the ass

[xultar]

10. +1 though I'm sure people here would hate people making more than 30k

[kestrel91316]

I dunno. I think jobs involving public health and safety should be

among the BEST paid, as opposed to whoever can invent and market the cleverest plastic gewgaw.

[CreekDog]

67. These guys were not paid less than 30k, they were A320 pilots with tens of thousands of hours

Not saying they were rich, but I highly doubt what you are thinking applies to these two.

[Aviation Pro]

75. The Captain and FO of the NWA 188....

...earned 155/hour and 106/hour respectively with a 75-hour per month guarantee as senior pilots on an A320. Doing the math that comes out to approximately 144,000 and 90,000 per year. The 30K meme is one of the most overused pieces of horseshit used by non-certificated community, it applies to regional FOs in their 2nd and 3rd year, but not legacy and major carriers.

Go here for more education: http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com

[Capn Sunshine]

89. It's not a "meme"

It came from Michael Moores movie, "Capitalism, a Love Story"
It discusses Airlines and attempts to cut back pilot wages.
Check it out here
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/must-read/mikes-blog-1-pilots-food-stamps

[WolverineDG]

84. That's what they pay the pilots who fly the regional jets

aka "baby planes." Those who fly the big planes make way more than that.

dg

[Dreamer Tatum]

85. Ignorant post nt

[NashVegas]

86. + 30 and Automate Everything In Sight

I'm glad some of the news media is bringing up the role automation is playing in this and other jobs where computers increasingly handle tasks that have normally been the province of very bright, very talented, and very skilled humans. Every time one of those tasks is automated, the bar is lowered for the person whose best judgment we used to rely on, and we now have them operate as assistants to the computer.

[PuppyBismark]

9. Just the thing to do.

If you have ever listened to air traffic control, you would know that these two pilots were asleep. Even if they were working on their computers as they say, ATC would be calling them and after 30,000 hours in an airplane, they would respond. It turns out that the cockpit voice recorder is an old model and only holds 30 minutes, thus the conversation they had when they woke up is gone, they knew this and were careful to not discuss their sleeping within 30 minutes of shutdown. In addition to losing their license, they should be fined and if possible put in jail for this violation. What I don't understand is how the rest of the flight crew, the flight attendants, did not get through to them when the flight stayed at altitude for so long. Perhaps, they were the ones who woke them up, but didn't know it.

There is technology to detect when an car/plane operator is asleep, perhaps it is one more device to install on airplanes.

O8) O8) O8)

[WriteDown]

11. Report: Pilots Were Distracted by Laptops, Discussion in Cockpit

Source: Fox News

The Northwest Pilots who overshot a Minnesota runway by 150 miles last week told investigators they were using their personal laptops in the cockpit, a violation of company policy, according to a National Transportation Safety Board advisory.

The two pilots, interviewed separately on Sunday, told investigators they lost track of time when they used their laptops while in a “concentrated period of discussion” about the new monthly crew flight scheduling system.

The system reportedly changed after the Northwest-Delta merger.

The pilots told NTSB officials that they had not been monitoring the airplane or calls from Air Traffic Control at that time, according to the report.

Both pilots said they heard conversation on the radio, but failed to notice messages that were sent by dispatchers. It wasn’t until a flight attendant called the pilots about five minutes before the flight was scheduled to land that they realized they had passed the airport, according to the report.

Fighters from two North American Aerospace Defense Command sites were put on alert for the plane when it was not responding to radio calls from the Federal Aviation Administration, NORAD reported....

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,569557,00.html

---

Damn Sims!

[rocktivity]

12. This a perfect example of why I can't donate more to DU

Now I'll have to buy ANOTHER bullshit meter to replace the one that broke just four days ago when I read this!

:nuke:
rocktivity

[Raschel]

22. It smells preeety darn bad....

[bigworld]

13. Playing some flight sim program, undoubtably.

[CLANG]

16. LOL!

[kestrel91316]

14. Were they downloading and watching PORN, lol???

[jmondine]

19. Wouldn't that delay them for, like, five minutes instead of 80?

[IDFbunny]

46. World of Warcraft. nt

[stray cat]

15. Now we have to worry about pilots texting while driving and causing crashes

[Raschel]

21. Air traffic control tried to get in touch with the pilots by texting them, they used every means of

communication possible. Isn't that weird that nobody could contact them? Sleeping is the only thing that makes sense.

[Missy Vixen]

27. Actually, it's not

>Sleeping is the only thing that makes sense.<

What is the only activity that the average man can't be distracted from, no matter what? Think about it. It won't take long.

I bet my husband $10 the other day that someone in that cockpit was having sex.

[davidwparker]

31. +1

[Epiphany4z]

33. well now thats why they

call it the cockpit......ya I know but somebody had ot go there...

[mopinko]

37. +1

that's where my money is, too.

[RobinA]

39. I Had This Thought

as well. Sleeping through radio chatter? Both of them? I dunno....

[Raschel]

43. Both of them would have to have been having sex to miss all of the attempts to

contact them. Maybe they were having sex with each other? (or am I slow)

[wpelb]

55. Now, now

We must be careful. We don't want to sound homophobic here of all places.

Seriously, let's just hope the truth does come out, whatever it may be. Meanwhile, if you're thinking of flying Delta or Northwest (BTW, is anyone getting as sick of all these corporate mergers as I am?), maybe you should rethink your travel plans.

[slutticus]

76. Yip. My thoughts too....

[NashVegas]

87. That Was the First Thought I Had

But then I reconsidered, just how much time they'd used up :)

[TheWraith]

30. ATC by texting? Why? They most likely had their cell phones off.

Cell phone service can be hit or miss at cruising altitude, and in some cases the transmissions can mess with the pilots' headsets. It would make sense for them to turn their phones off.

[slutticus]

77. I don't think they mean the cell phone type of texting. Probably an ACARS message.

[Raschel]

80. I guess it's texting through the controls? Something like that. I don't

remember, but they did try to text them.

[dipsydoodle]

17. Probably trying to milk their cows on Farmville

:)

[boppers]

45. Was it a super-berry weekend?

Those grow so fast that it's easy to lose track...

[Lautremont]

18. Northworst strikes again. n/t

[SydneyBristow]

60. Ya know, for all intents and purposes...

these are Delta pilots. They wear their uniform, their procedures are Delta, they bid with Deltas system, they get paid by Delta. Did the media forget the merger last year? I know that things have been slowly changing over, but it just seems to me like Delta and the media are using "Northwest"s name because they know that they will be a forgotten brand very soon. Call them what they are!

Syd

[tularetom]

20. Is that what the kids are calling BJ's from the flight attendants these day?

[Scairp]

69. HAD to have been more than that

IMO.

[Grassy Knoll]

23. fox noise, sez so, it must be true. n/t

[corpseratemedia]

24. yeah they went to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.com

[demigoddess]

25. probably would lose their jobs if they admitted they were so tired and overworked

that they fell asleep at the wheel.

[ldf]

38. a print up of their actual schedule...

how long they were on duty before this flight, could ascertain fatigue, and probability of sleep.

otherwise it was blowjobs. and who says it had to be flight attendants? it only takes two. there were already two in the cockpit.

or porn on the "laptops"... a couple of studly (assumed) men, sitting next to each other, stroking, backing off, stroking, backing off, 80 minutes could pass quickly...

all substances on the cockpit windows should be analysed.

:-)

[dysfunctional press]

57. they're going to lose them anyway.

laptops on the flightdeck are grounds for dismissal at the airline.

[CK_John]

26. Clever defense, admit to a violation to cover another, IMO. n/t

[barb162]

35. These guys will be lucky if they ever work near an airplane again. n/t

[tomm2thumbs]

28. if I were trying to 'tell the truth' I'd offer up a lie detector - nothing to hide

betcha that neither of them off that up

[Owl]

29. Smells a lot like BS.

[excess_3]

32. they were asleep, or not? .nt

[barb162]

34. Autopilot balloon in the cockpit courtesy of "Airplane" n/t

[bertman]

36. I might have bought it if they said they were on DU, but on a scheduling program?? Come on.

[av8rdave]

40. The scheduling program they have to learn due to the merger is pretty complicated

[bertman]

41. That was my weak attempt at humor, av8rdave. But thank you for letting me know

about that program.

Still, it seems odd that they could be SO totally distracted for SO long.

[av8rdave]

51. Sorry for the serious response....

I was PUEF (Posting Under Extreme Fatigue) last night. Never a good idea!

FWIW, the program is complex, but I've never been overly distracted by it. Then again, I've not tried to learn/use it while flying.

[ipfilter]

56. Does this program work at cruising alititude?

Serious question, is it an app that uses the Internet and do pilots have connectivity in the air?

[av8rdave]

61. No, it's not

It's a program that can download the available trips for the following month, then allow you to manipulate them according to whatever your criteria may be.

It gets complex because in a typical category, there are hundreds of trips. What you actually get depends on your seniority as well as a lot of company and contractual policies. Even a small difference in the way you structure your input can make a huge difference in your schedule, pay and lifestyle. There are a lot of tricks and "gotchas" to learning it, and the Northwest folks need to learn it in a hurry, as it's phase - in is coming right up. In fact, it's already happened for some categories.

It's very different from the system they used.

On edit: You can download the following month's data when you have connectivity, then work on it later. Once you have the data, you don't need a connection again until you're ready to upload your input.

[NashVegas]

88. So .. How Did They Work This Before the Comp Programs?

Because if that truly was what had them distracted, I'd love to see these guys go public with what computer technology is doing to people in jobs that required constant mental alertness pre-computer.

[av8rdave]

91. It was computerized before, but the system was very simple

Not sure how the Northwest guys did it, but we had pre-built schedules - the trips, days off, etc., were all built. There were as many schedules available as there were pilots in each category. You simply rank ordered them the way you wanted, and the highest one on your list still available when they got to your seniority was the one you got.*

Now, all that is published is a long laundry list of trips and the dates they fly. We use a rather complex system where you enter preferences (in the correct syntax, of course) that deal with everything from the days off you prefer to the kinds of trips you want to fly to the stuff you'd really like to avoid, to how many pay hours you're shooting for, etc., etc. There is a great deal of strategy involved in what order your place the preferences to how each preference is structured. If you don't do it just right, somebody junior to you will wind up with a better schedule, flying the stuff you wanted to fly.

*When I first got hired, we were pre-computer. We also had our own schedulers in each crew base. Each month, you dropped a sheet of paper in a box in the scheduling office on which you listed the available schedules in the order you you would prefer. The schedulers would stay up at night with the piles of paper and a greaseboard and determine who got what.

[sendero]

62. They won't have to be bothered with it now..

... that they have rightfully lost their licenses.

There are lots of rules pilots must follow for a damn good reason.

[Blue_Tires]

42. fantasy football trade deadline?

[mn9driver]

44. Not surprising that something like this happened.

Every checklist, operating procedure, operating manual, policy manual, health plan, scheduling rule etc. etc. has changed for the NWA pilots in the last 5 months. There has been about 90 minutes of self study powerpoint slides to look at, and other than that they have had to figure all of this out on their own.

These guys went way over the line. They deserve to have the book thrown at them. But the NWA pilots are ALL trying to figure out this avalanche of change--that way, the Delta executives will be able to accept hearty congratulations and big bonuses for getting the merger done fast and cheap.

[peacebuzzard]

50. Well said.

I think the FAA should take that into consideration when they review the defense that the merger of the two gigantic airlines into the monster New Delta included all that poster above mentioned. Compile that with the fact that all of the training and procedure implementation has to be done on primarily "downtime", and that off duty time is comprised of commuting, sleeping, and living personal situations you wonder when the required training can be done. The Northwest-Delta merger is of a magnitude never before achieved in the history of aviation.

I think there was far more danger involved with flight 60 in Atlanta that landed on a taxi-way rather than the runway. This a/c was in a defined airspace with preprogrammed and radar visualized co-ordinates. Irresponsible yes, but as far as imminent danger to passengers there was none.
Most of this has been blown out of proportion, IMO.

[RobinA]

53. I Hope

that if this was, in fact, the case, some idiot will learn from it. But why do I doubt it? I've been involved in two mergers as the Unfortunate Worker Peon and they give zero thought to the people doing the actual work when they stick new companies together and say "work, damn it." Both companies that I was with no longer exist, in no small part because no higher up gave a thought to a smooth transition for anybody but themselves and their golden parachutes. I was with a retail operation that mergered with another retail operation, they stuck the distribution systems together, waved a magic wand, and commended it to work. Surprise! It leaked like a sieve and a bunch of people working in warehouses in Long Island City got a lot of nice stuff and probably a decent retirement by selling other nice stuff all over the city.

[liberalhistorian]

47. Well, call me psychic, but something tells me that these

these two gentlemen aren't gonna need to worry about the "new monthly crew flight scheduling system" for very much longer. In fact, by now, they might not need to worry about it at all. Just a guess.

[Blue_Tires]

48. is that just the pilots' story, or does the CVR back them up??

and if it is something truly embarassing (like 5-way sex or something), will the airline and FAA stick to the 'official' story??

[Canuckistanian]

49. The CVR will tell all

You can't hide from CVR. It hears EVERYTHING

[wpelb]

54. Not necessarily

I heard this morning that the plane had one of the older recorders that captures just the last 30 minutes of conversation. It's on some kind of a loop that continuously deletes anything over 30 minutes old. During the last 20-30 minutes of the flight, the pilots would have been involved in landing the plane, so if they kept their mouths shut for a few minutes before beginning their descent, there would be no record of what they did.

Newer recorders go for two hours, giving the pilots a lot more time that they have to cover up anything wrong they might have said.

[Canuckistanian]

65. Audio tape?

They're still using friggin' AUDIO TAPES on commercial aircraft?

That's astounding.

[dysfunctional press]

58. not in this case- it was the 30-minute type of recorder.

it only has 30 minutes of recording time, and continually records over itself.

[Canuckistanian]

64. I just heard about that today

That's unbelievable. I used to work on CVR's for the military. They had a Flash memory capacity that was good for 3 hours of continuous recording.

Why are critical systems such as CVRs STILL so primitive?

Shit, my MP3 player can record FOUR hours of audio.

[dysfunctional press]

59. the cvr was of the 30-minute variety.

no good to investigators.

[Aviation Pro]

74. The voice recorder is always a "30-minute variety".....

....

[rocktivity]

79. This is what I truly love most about DU

We represent so many different walks of life, any of us an be called upon to be an "expert!"

I've had two questions about this thing. One was answered upthread, and it sounds like you're qualified to answer the other: CAN you imagine the pilots realizing they'd screwed up big time, and staying in air longer than they should have in order to rig the recorder?


rocktivity

[Festivito]

52. I'm BORED by this whining over a lost 10 minutes.

Add, five more to turn around.

It's just a FOXy time wasting story.

[peaches2003]

63. Licenses revoked

CNN just announced their licenses have been revoked. Good.

[LeftyMom]

93. Ah yes, the "sorry, but we just got our energy packs and needed to rob the electronics store" excuse

[sce56]

71. Now if they could just revoke the Pacemaker of Richard B Cheney!

Something about that name gets me the Pilot Capt. Timothy B. Cheney

[rocktivity]

72. Glad to hear it--and that they moved so quickly

Unless early onset Alzheimer's disease is contagious...

:eyes:
rocktivity

[Aviation Pro]

73. On a similar note.....

...about a month ago a hearing was conducted by the House's aviation sub-committee as they sought to gain input from several aviation professionals on the recent accident involving a regional carrier (Colgan 3047, you can use your Google-fu to look it up). The overstated and overblown theme of the majority of the panel was that the only pilots who should enter the regionals should be those who have a minimum quantity of hours (1500) and hold an ATP certificate (the PIC of the Colgan accident had both, so WTF?). The real agenda of the majority of the panel was to reduce the pilot pool and therefore gain back the lost concessions that the union (ALPA) was part of during this decade. They posited the theory that low time pilots from ab-initio programs were not capable of the decision making processes that are developed as a result of "experience" (side note, I trained 103 ab-initio low time pilots in my last organization and all 103 were hired and a majority of them still fly for the regionals - there has not been one accident or incident reported by this group to date).

This travesty of a mockery of two shams of a burlesque proves that this is utter horseshit since both pilots of NWA 188 had thousands of hours and held their ATPs.

You want to solve the U.S. commercial aviation woes? Get rid of the seniority system, promote on merit not quantity and shut down the scam flight academies that exist in the U.S.

[skepticscott]

78. Just out of curiosity

How exactly do you judge "merit" on an airline pilot? What are the performance metrics that you use to judge who the superior pilots are?

[defendandprotect]

81. Cockpit recording must have been interesting -- !!!