[Updated with CNN report: Controllers feared hijacking AFTER talking to an "nonresponsive" pilot]
Oops, a Northwest/Delta A320 with 147 passengers on board overflew the Minneapolis airport by 150 miles, with the pilots failing to respond to radio calls Wednesday night.
Upon landing after the … uh, sojourn, the pilots told the FBI and airport police that “they were in a heated discussion over airline policy and they lost situational awareness,” according to the National Transportation Safety Board in an initial advisory on the incident.
Thank God this alleged heated discussion didn’t escalate into a knock-down drag-out fist-fighting, hair-pulling, shrieking brawl, like that recent incident on an Air India flight where the pilots left the cockpit in flight over Pakistan to get into a donnybrook with flight attendants in the front of the plane.
Obviously, two pilots in a cockpit on approach to a major airport who overshoot it and fly on blissfully for 78 minutes, failing to acknowledge radio calls, sounds an awful lot like two pilots who were asleep, assuming they weren’t involved in some “heated discussion” that caused them to forget where the hell they were. Which happens to have been in the crowded airspace of a major international airport.
More to come on this fiasco, you can bet.
[Update}: Like this report on CNN (quoting an unnamed federal source) saying that controllers feared the plane had been hijacked AFTER they finally made contact with the cockpit and found a pilot so "nonresponsive" that they ordered the crew to execute certain "maneuvers" to provide evidence that the pilots in fact were in control of the plane.]
###
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:32 am
I think these two pilots should start working on their resume for a new career in ground transportation. Even though we certainly don’t know all the facts, I cannot imagine an explanation that would/should satisfy the FAA, NTSB and/or Delta.
Imagine they’d been on a flight to, say, PHL and overshot going in the direction of DC. I wonder how long the air force would have let them continue on their path before sending up some F16s to get the flight down one way or another…
October 23rd, 2009 at 12:12 pm
[...] the airline community – unlike Burton – has plenty to say about the incident. Joe Sharkey, who runs one of the most popular airline blogs, doesn’t buy the sleeping [...]
October 23rd, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Frighteningly, I’m not surprised. We just had a 2 week trip that involved 4 flights with Delta/Northwest/Mesaba/whoever they choose to use today. Connections were, well missed completely, mistakes were made in rerouting us and twice, yes twice, our luggage was lost completely. The tears and holes in our brand new luggage I actually could have lived with had the other stuff not happened. Coming home, our luggage got stuck in Detroit. Strange thing is, we were never scheduled to fly through Detroit. High fives on security! Not one employee was apologetic, instead being very irritated at giving us $13 in food vouchers when we’d be spending an extra 9 hours at one airport. My feedback with them is pending. Lemme know if you’d like a copy of the letter I sent.