Oct 23, 2009 8:00 pm US/Eastern
NTSB: Pilots Say They Were In Heated Talks
Pair Who Overflew Minneapolis Destination By 150 Miles, Failed To See Flight Displays Flashing, Bells Ringing
WASHINGTON (AP) ―
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The two Northwest Airlines pilots should have had numerous warnings that their flight was nearing its destination in Minneapolis. Controllers were trying to reach the plane by radio. (File)
Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
Federal investigators are scrambling to determine what happened aboard a Northwest Airlines jetliner whose crew flew 150 miles past its destination while air traffic controllers, other pilots and even a flight attendant back in the cabin tried to get their attention.
Investigators don't know whether the pilots may have fallen asleep, but National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Keith Holloway said Friday that fatigue and cockpit distraction will be looked into.
The plane's flight recorders were brought to Washington Friday, but the cockpit voice recorder is an older model that contains only the last 30 minutes of conversation. That makes the investigation more difficult since that time would be taken up by the flight back to Minneapolis -- the intended destination -- and the landing there Wednesday night.
Flight 188's recorders were delivered to the NTSB's Washington office. The pilots, both temporarily suspended, are to be interviewed by investigators next week. The airline, acquired last year by Delta Air Lines, is also investigating.
The crew told authorities they were distracted during a heated discussion over airline policy, the NTSB said.
Wednesday night, the airliner with more than 140 passengers aboard zoomed past Minneapolis at 37,000 feet at what was supposed to be the end of a flight from San Diego. Worried about who was actually at the controls, officials asked the crew to prove who they were by executing turns after they finally were contacted.
On the ground, police and FBI agents prepared for the worst, and the Air National Guard put fighter jets on alert at two locations as the drama unfolded.
Pilots from two other planes in the vicinity were finally able to reach the pilots using a different radio frequency, a controllers union spokesman said. A flight attendant in the cabin also was able to contact them by intercom, said a source close to the investigation who wasn't authorized to talk publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
By that time, the Airbus A320 was over Eau Claire, Wis., and the pilots had been out of communication with air traffic controllers for over an hour. They turned back and landed safely in Minneapolis, the plane's scheduled destination.
The plane passed over Minneapolis at 37,000 feet just before 8 p.m. local time. Contact with controllers wasn't established until 14 minutes later, NTSB said.
Air traffic controllers in Denver had been in contact with the pilots as they flew over the Rockies, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said. But as the plane got closer to Minneapolis, she said, "the Denver center tried to contact the flight but couldn't get anyone."
Denver controllers notified their counterparts in Minneapolis, who also tried to reach the crew without success, Brown said.
Officials suspect Flight 188's radio might still have been tuned to a frequency used by Denver controllers even though the plane had flown beyond their reach, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union. Controllers worked throughout the incident with the pilots of other planes, asking them to try to raise Flight 188 using the Denver frequency, he said
That was unsuccessful until two pilots working with Minneapolis controllers finally got through just before the plane turned around, Church said. Minneapolis controllers don't have the capability of using the Denver frequency, but pilots do, he said.
After re-establishing contact with the plane, controllers asked the pilot in charge to execute a series of turns to show he was in control of the aircraft, Church said.
"Controllers have a heightened sense of vigilance when we're not able to talk to an aircraft. That's the reality post-9/11," he said.
Passenger Lonnie Heidtke said he didn't notice anything unusual before the landing except that the plane was late.
The flight attendants "did say there was a delay and we'd have to orbit or something to that effect before we got back. They really didn't say we overflew Minneapolis. ... They implied it was just a business-as-usual delay," said Heidtke, a consultant with a supercomputer consulting company based in Bloomington, Minn.
Once on the ground, the plane was met by police and FBI agents. Passengers retrieving their luggage from overhead bins were asked by flight attendants sit down, Heidtke said. An airport police officer and a couple other people came on board and stood at the cockpit door, talking to the pilots, he said.
"I did jokingly call my wife and say, 'This is the first time I've seen the police meet the plane. Maybe they're going to arrest the pilots for being so late.' Maybe I was right," Heidtke said.
The pilots' explanation that they were distracted by shop talk "just doesn't make any sense," said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va. "The pilots are saying they were involved in a heated conversation. Well, that was a very long conversation."
The FAA is updating rules governing how many hours commercial pilots may fly and remain on duty. The NTSB also cautioned government agencies this week about the risks of sleep apnea contributing to transportation accidents.
In January 2008, two pilots for go! airlines fell asleep for at least 18 minutes during a midmorning flight from Honolulu to Hilo, Hawaii. The plane passed its destination and was heading out over open ocean before controllers raised the pilots. The captain was later diagnosed with sleep apnea.The two Northwest Airlines pilots should have had numerous warnings that their flight was nearing its destination in Minneapolis. Controllers were trying to reach the plane by radio.
When that didn't work, normal procedure would be to have the airline's dispatcher also try to raise the plane using a phone-like device that chimes.
The Airbus A320's brightly lit cockpit flight displays should have shown the pilots that it was time to start descending to land.
Instead, the plane, en route from San Diego with 144 passengers and a crew of five, passed over Minneapolis at 37,000 feet just before 9 p.m. EDT Wednesday. Contact with controllers wasn't established until 14 minutes later, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the incident. By that time, the plane was over Eau Claire, Wis., more than 100 miles beyond Minneapolis.
Even that should have been a clue. One of the things most pilots are attuned to when flying, even above 30,000 feet, are city lights. The bright lights of Minneapolis should have alerted the pilots that they were over their destination, just as the dimmer lights of Eau Claire should have warned them they were in the wrong place, experts said.
Yet, the pilots didn't discover their mistake until a flight attendant in the cabin contacted them over the intercom, said a source close to the investigation who wasn't authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be identified. The pilots had lost communications with air traffic controllers for over an hour and had overflown their destination by 150 miles. The plane turned around, landed safely and no one was injured.
By that time, reports CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes, about controllers from two different centers - Denver and Minneapolis - had tried to reach the Flight 188 cockpit.
After the first half hour, controllers contacted Northwest to alert the airline to the problem. Northwest, like the controllers, began trying to reach the pilots on their two text messaging systems in addition to all the radio transmissions.
By the time the plane overshot Minneapolis, it was a "tense situation" in the control center with the "concern that something more sinister was going on here," a National Air Traffic Controllers Association official told Cordes.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the pilots, whose identities have not been released, told authorities they had become distracted by a conversation about airline policy and lost track of their location. Federal officials are investigating whether pilot fatigue also may have played a role.
"It just doesn't make any sense," said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va. "The pilots are saying they were involved in a heated conversation. Well, that was a very long conversation."
As of Thursday, NTSB investigators had not yet examined the plane's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, which were being sent to Washington for analysis.
Ben Berman, an airline pilot and former chief of major accident investigations at the NTSB, said it becomes second nature for pilots to know when they need to begin landing preparations.
Those preparation should have begun when the flight was still 100 miles or more away from Minneapolis, he said. It would require a fairly dramatic event to lose track of that kind of awareness, he said.
Shop talk "pretty clearly wasn't all that was going on," Berman said.
NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway said Thursday investigators hadn't yet questioned the pilots and didn't know whether it was possible they had fallen asleep.
The two pilots have been suspended from flying while Delta Air Lines Inc. conducts an internal investigation, said Anthony Black, a spokesman for the Atlanta-based airline, which acquired Northwest last year. He refused to name them or give further details on their background or what happened in the air.
Andrea Allmon, a passenger on the delayed flight to Minnesota. She told CBS' "Early Show" of the confusion in the cabin as the plane was swarmed by police upon landing.
"When the doors opened, everyone was getting their bags off and the plane was swarmed by police. They came into the front gally and started talking with the crew in the cockpit. The flight attendants then told us to take a seat. So everybody sat down and looked around and nobody knew what was
going on."
The FAA is updating decades-old rules governing how many hours commercial pilots may fly and remain on duty. The NTSB also cautioned government agencies this week about the risks of sleep apnea contributing to transportation accidents.
In January 2008, two go! airlines pilots fell asleep for at least 18 minutes during a midmorning flight from Honolulu to Hilo, Hawaii. The plane passed its destination and was heading out over open ocean before controllers raised the pilots. The captain was later diagnosed with sleep apnea.
Air traffic controllers in Denver had been in contact with the Northwest pilots as they flew over the Rockies, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said. But as the plane got closer to Minneapolis, she said, "the Denver center tried to contact the flight but couldn't get anyone." That was just before 8 p.m.
Denver controllers notified their counterparts in Minneapolis, who also tried to reach the crew without success, Brown said.
The FAA had notified the military, which put Air National Guard fighter jets on alert at two locations. As many as four planes could have been scrambled, but none took to the air.
The incident is likely to renew questions about pilot professionalism that surfaced after the crash of Continental Express Flight 3407 near Buffalo, N.Y., on Feb. 12. Low pay, training and work schedules at regional airlines were some of the issues raised in connection with that accident. The flight was operated for Continental by regional carrier Colgan Air Inc. of Manassas, Va.
The accident generated concern in Congress and the Obama administration that regional airline pilots aren't as qualified or experienced as pilots at major airlines, although some pilots' unions have warned that standards have been slipping industrywide.
(© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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