WASHINGTON — Two Northwest Airlines pilots have
told federal investigators that they were going
over schedules using their laptop computers in
violation of company policy while their plane
overflew their Minneapolis destination by 150
miles, the National Transportation Safety Board
said Monday.
The pilots — Richard Cole of
Salem, Ore., the first officer, and Timothy
Cheney of Gig Harbor, Wash., the captain — said
in interviews conducted over the weekend that
they were not fatigued and didn't fall asleep,
the board said in a statement.
Instead, Cole and Cheney told investigators
that they both had their laptops out while the
first officer, who had more experience with
scheduling, instructed the captain on monthly
flight crew scheduling. The pilots were out of
communication with air traffic controllers and
their airline for more than an hour and didn't
realize their mistake until contacted by a
flight attendant, the board said.
Many aviation safety experts had said it was
more plausible that the pilots had fallen asleep
during the cruise phase of their flight than
that they had become so focused on a
conversation that they lost awareness of their
surroundings for more than an hour. Air traffic
controllers in Denver and Minneapolis repeatedly
tried without success to raise the pilots by
radio. Other pilots in the vicinity tried
reaching the plane on other radio frequencies.
Their airline tried contacting them using a
radio text message that chimes.
Authorities became so alarmed that National
Guard jets were readied for takeoff at two
locations and the White House Situation Room
alerted senior White House officials, who
monitored the airliner carrying 144 passenger
and five crew members as it flew across a broad
swath of the mid-continent completely out of
contact with anyone on the ground.
"It's inexcusable," said former NTSB Chairman
Jim Hall. "I feel sorry for the individuals
involved, but this was certainly not an
innocuous event — this was a significant breach
of aviation safety and aviation security."
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2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
