Wayward pilots 'working on their laptops'

Two pilots told investigators they were going over schedules using their laptop computers against company policy while their passenger jet overflew their Minneapolis destination by 150 miles.

America’s National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the Northwest Airlines pilots – Richard Cole, the first officer, and Timothy Cheney, the captain – denied in interviews conducted over the weekend that they were tired and fell asleep.

Instead, Mr Cole and Mr Cheney told investigators that they 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 did not realise their mistake until contacted by a flight attendant, the board said.

Many aviation safety experts had said it was more plausible that the pilots of the Airbus had fallen asleep during the cruise phase of their flight last Wednesday night than that they had become so focused on a conversation that they lost awareness of their surroundings for such a lengthy period of time.

Air traffic controllers in Denver and Minneapolis repeatedly tried without success to raise the pilots of the San Diego-to-Minneapolis flight by radio. Other pilots tried reaching the plane on different radio frequencies and their airline tried contacting them using a radio text message that chimes.

Authorities became so alarmed that National Guard jets were readied for take-off at two locations and the White House Situation Room alerted senior White House officials, who monitored Northwest Flight 188 with its 144 passengers and five crew members as the Airbus A320 flew across a broad swathe 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.”

Mr Cheney and Mr Cole are both experienced pilots, according to the NTSB. Mr Cheney, 53, was hired by Northwest in 1985 and has about 20,000 hours of flying time, about half of which was in the A320. Mr Cole had about 11,000 hours of flight time, including 5,000 hours on the A320.

Both pilots told the board they had never had an accident, incident or violation, the board said.

The pilots acknowledged that while they were engaged in working on their laptops they were not paying attention to radio traffic, messages from their airline or their cockpit instruments, the board said.

That is contrary to one of the fundamentals of commercial piloting, which is to keep attention focused on monitoring messages from controllers and watching flight displays in the cockpit.

“It is unsettling when you see experienced pilots who were not professional in flying this flight,” said Kitty Higgins, a former NTSB board member. “This is clearly a wake-up call for everybody.”

Delta has suspended the pilots pending an investigation into the incident. The FAA is also investigating and has warned them that their pilot licences could be suspended or revoked.

Pilots’ schedules are tied to their seniority, which also determines the aircraft they fly. Those at the top of the list get first choice on holidays, the best routes and the bigger planes that they get paid more for flying.

Following Delta Air Lines’ acquisition of Northwest, an arbitration panel ruled that the pilot seniority lists at the two carriers should be integrated based on pilots’ status and aircraft category.