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Oct 26, 2009 6:53 pm US/Central
Pilots Say They Were Working On Their Laptops
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) ―
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Northwest Airlines is cooperating and doing its own internal investigation. (File)
CBS
The two Northwest Airlines pilots involved in a flight that overshot the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport last week have denied falling asleep in the cockpit.
The denials came in connection with investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board into NWA Flight 188.
The pilots told investigators they were going over scheduling using their laptops, which violates company policy. They overshot their destination by about 150 miles.
Spokesman Keith Holloway said investigators were interviewing the pilot and co-pilot in Minneapolis on Sunday. The NTSB released the full summary of their interview findings on Monday afternoon.
Air traffic controllers tried for more than an hour Wednesday night to contact the Minneapolis-bound flight, which later turned around and landed safely.
First officer Richard Cole has said he and the captain, Timothy B. Cheney, of Gig Harbor, Wash., were not sleeping or arguing in the cockpit.
"There was no heated discussion, no argument, no fight, no one fell asleep," said Cole.
The Wall Street Journal reported on their Web site Sunday that the pilots planned to repeat their story to safety investigators during Sunday's interview, and according to a source familiar with the NTSB investigation, that appears to be what passed.
Both told investigators virtually identical stories indicating they had "lost situational awareness" and didn't notice radio calls and e-mails from air traffic controllers and other aircraft as they sailed beyond MSP and into Wisconsin.
According to the NTSB, the pilots only realized their mistake when one of the flight attendants asked them, via intercom, why the plane had not yet descended.
"That's shocking because that's their job and if that's what they did, they were clearly not in control," said Delta passenger Kathleen Przbylski.
This weekend, Cole said, outside of his Salem, Ore. home, that "airplanes lose contact with the ground people all the time. It happens. Sometimes they get together right away; sometimes it takes awhile before one or the other notices that they are not in contact."
The pilots were out of communication with air traffic controllers for more than an hour.
According to a press release from the NSTB, the pilots claim they were busy trying to figure out the new crew scheduling system that was now in place as a result of the merger between NWA and Delta.
The NTSB summary stated both pilots accessed and used personal laptops while discussing the scheduling system, which would be a violation of company policy on personal computers.
The jet's cockpit recorder only captured audio from the last 30 minutes of flight, after the plane had already turned around.
Northwest Airlines is cooperating and conducting its own internal
investigations, according to a spokesperson for Delta Air Lines,
Northwest's parent company.
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, a member of the Commerce Committee Aviation Subcommittee, released a statement in response to the preliminary findings.
"The pilots should have been focused on safely steering Flight 188 home, instead of checking crew schedules," she said. "It is simply unacceptable."
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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