Stop Digging
| Mon Oct. 26, 2009 2:46 PM PDT
The latest story from those pilots who overshot Minneapolis is that they had their laptops out and got so absorbed in what they were doing that they lost track of time. Private pilot James Fallows isn't buying it:
The difficulty for the pilots is that the version of the story they're resisting — that they simply fell asleep — is less damning for them than any alternative version. If they fell asleep, that's bad, but they could argue some kind of force majeure. But if their "heated conversation" (previous story) or intense laptop use (current story) kept them from remembering their most elemental responsibility as pilots, that really is beyond the pale. The closest comparison would be, say, to an operating-room crew that got so interested in watching a football game on TV that they sliced open a patient but forgot to take out his appendix. Forgetting where you are going is incredible enough on its own. And not having any back-of-mind nag saying, "Wait a minute, we haven't heard anything on the air-traffic control frequency for a while" also is outside any known experience of the professional flight-crew world.
The laptop story really, really doesn't hold water. Air traffic controllers tried to reach them repeatedly with no success, and there's just no way that busily reviewing flight schedules could have absorbed them so fully that they didn't even hear their radio. These guys need to remember the first lesson about what to do when you find yourself in a hole: stop digging.
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Comments
oh come on Kevin
Submitted by optical weenie on Mon Oct. 26, 2009 3:09 PM PDT.
They were watching a porn DVD on the laptop. Get real!
Dialog fragments on the
Submitted by Phil Palmer (not verified) on Mon Oct. 26, 2009 3:24 PM PDT.
Dialog fragments on the cockpit voice recorder, "Easy, easy,..." and "Take that...bitch" obviously refer to a game of Hearts played on networked laptops. Glad that's sorted out.
Wait for the tape
Submitted by daCascadian (not verified) on Mon Oct. 26, 2009 4:02 PM PDT.
The whole story sounds very fishy to me but I choose to await the official replay of the CVR & FDR recordings. We shall see.
At minimum I think that there were several breakdowns in functionality involved. ATC/FAA, the military, the airline dispatchers, the cabin crew all need to fess up why there was no action (beyond chatter and email) taken in real time as this happened.
Plenty of blame to spread around.
"...Having an elite to blame is a often prerequisite of serious reform..." - Kevin Phillips
You may be waiting a long
Submitted by Trippp on Mon Oct. 26, 2009 5:06 PM PDT.
You may be waiting a long time. I heard the flight recorder was an older model with only a 30 minute capacity for voice recording. It will show sounds after contact was re-established. Also, I heard NORAD fighter jets were scrambled but contact was re-established before they could take off.
My prediction is that in about ten years or so we'll start seeing the UFO books claiming to explain what really happened.
Tape update
Submitted by daCascadian (not verified) on Mon Oct. 26, 2009 6:12 PM PDT.
I am always willing to wait for the NTSB to complete their investigation. There is still the FDR to check and the information below makes some sense but isn`t a reson for the incompetent behavior. Pull their tickets for a minimum of one calendar year would be my suggestion (given the evidence so far).
"...The NTSB said, that the use of laptops during flight is prohibited by company policy. The crew was used the cockpit loudspeakers in cruise flight, not their head sets. When asked by ATC about their silence on the radio, the crew told ATC, they had a "cockpit distraction" and were dealing "with company policies". Both pilots said, there was no company policy on the cabin crew checking the flight deck.
First analysis of the Cockpit Voice Recorder showed, that it recorded only 30 minutes. The cockpit area microphone channel was not working during this recording, the cockpit headphone microphones however recorded the conversation during final approach, landing and at the gate. The flight data recorder is still being analysed." The Aviation Herald
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." - I Corinthians 13:11
I pasted Kevin's post into a
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon Oct. 26, 2009 4:25 PM PDT.
I pasted Kevin's post into a message to my wife (we've been following this whole thing loosely). She responded, "Ok, seriously, how many stories r we gonna hear? Unless one was blowing the other one and they both had their headphones off I just don't buy it"
Expert I heard thought
Submitted by Luther on Mon Oct. 26, 2009 5:01 PM PDT.
Expert I heard thought sleeping would be the worst offense, because they could have run the plane out of fuel, and that other explanations were unlikely. Makes sense to me.
One Modest Suggestion:
Submitted by Howard (not verified) on Mon Oct. 26, 2009 5:24 PM PDT.
An alarm? And then more alarms for when the alarms don't alarm the flight crew? Geez, all that technology and there's no alarm in the cockpit?!
It had to have been either
Submitted by Kevin (not Drum) (not verified) on Mon Oct. 26, 2009 5:36 PM PDT.
It had to have been either sleep or sex (or both).
My vote's on sex.
Submitted by clio on Mon Oct. 26, 2009 9:17 PM PDT.
And even then it must have been a new affair to cause this much distraction.
One thought that crossed my
Submitted by tagimaucia (not verified) on Mon Oct. 26, 2009 6:04 PM PDT.
One thought that crossed my mind is that whatever embarrassing or incriminating reason there was for the overflight, the pilots might have made a conscious decision to fly a bit further before turning around, for the precise reason of ensuring it would be at least 30 minutes until they landed, and thus that the cockpit voice recorder would erase over any audio evidence, enabling them to make up whatever story they liked.
Having game playing kids.
Submitted by Omega Centauri (not verified) on Mon Oct. 26, 2009 6:13 PM PDT.
It is easy for me to beieve the game distraction thing. Less so actual distraction, than that many games are not easily paused, and the player/players risk losing points -or getting their charcters killed off if they quit early. Many of these games only allow pausing at certain well spaced checkpoints, so they were probably worried about being penalized by the computer game, and simply played on until they hit the next safe checkpoint!
Of course they might also have simply fallen asleep.
Or perhaps there was incriminating porn on the computers, and they had to complete the disk purge, before risking letting anyone see their laptops.......
Pilots have now the most boring job in the world. It's not like they're responsible for actually doing much of the flying anymore - computers do it. They're just there for the landing and take-off and blathering on the intercom. Oh, and the safety lists.
They'll be fired if they were sleeping, which is stupid. There are dozens of things which should ring alarms before the plots would - if they were awake - even know of the danger.
System monitors
Submitted by daCascadian (not verified) on Mon Oct. 26, 2009 6:56 PM PDT.
Crissa >"...It's not like they're responsible for actually doing much of the flying anymore - computers do it. They're just there for the landing and take-off..."
Actually much of the takeoff and landing activity is done by computer as well, and all of some of them. A lot of their moment to moment tasks are monitoring automated systems doing the actual flying. They are there mostly for those out of normal moments of terror when things go wrong, go wrong, go wrong...
"In the future, we will all drive standing up. In the future, love will be taught on television and by listening to pop songs." - Talking Heads
>"...They are there mostly
Submitted by Bruce the Canuck (not verified) on Mon Oct. 26, 2009 8:28 PM PDT.
>"...They are there mostly for those out of normal moments of terror when things go wrong, go wrong, go wrong..."
Or for when the automated systems don't behave as they should. This happens fairly often - on a daily basis within a given airline. It generally takes a person to see what the sensible interpretation and response is.
Come on, guys
Submitted by gyrfalcon on Mon Oct. 26, 2009 8:37 PM PDT.
They weren't sleeping and they weren't playing computer games. Several flight attendants banged loudly on the door and got no response. Not much doubt they were having a sexual romp in there, either with each other or with one or more of the flight attendants. NTSB, I'm sure, is looking into whether any of the FAs were missing during all this. There really is no other explanation.
This is clearly a case of
Submitted by il dude (not verified) on Mon Oct. 26, 2009 9:29 PM PDT.
This is clearly a case of regional bias, as one of the pilots is from Gig Harbor, WA and the other from Salem, OR. Obviously one was having an Alameda Black Bear XX Stout and the other a Red Mountain Merlot with organic Chevre from Ellensburg. Too busy to pay attention to that landing business.
The heck with Minneapolis, they couldn't wait to get back to the vegan strip club in Portland !
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