Airliner crew flies 150 miles past airport

On Oct 27, 3:53*pm, george wrote:
On Oct 28, 5:54*am, D Ramapriya wrote:





On 27 Oct, 00:01, george wrote:

On Oct 26, 11:40*am, Mike Ash wrote:

In article
,
*D Ramapriya wrote:

It's the accent upon the 100+ miles that gets me.
In a car world 100+ miles -is- a long way.
In an airliner at 400 knots that's 15 minutes.

I'm not a pilot but here are some quick calculations. With no tail or
head wind, the flight from SAN to MSP should've been a 3.5-hour, 1500-
mile journey. Assuming an hourly fuel burn of about 2.25 tons, they'd
have taken on about 8 tons plus an allowance for Wx en route and at
the destination in case of a divert.

Yup.
My concern however is with the newspaper claim that is downright
flatout wrong.

I think that since the nearest alternative airport must've been some
way away (Rochester?), they'd have taken on board about 10 tons of
fuel. In flying past the destination for 150 miles, it'd have been a
20% extra journey by the time they landed back at MSP.

Since they weren't in contact with ATC for over an hour the distance
travelled gets rather significant against the distance of the leg



I'm not a pilot but I must beg to differ with you somewhat. A 300-mile
extra run on a scheduled 1500-mile journey doesn't sound as minor as
you're making it out to be. What if they'd encountered a stiff,
unexpected headwind enroute? It'd be interesting to note how close to
fumes they were when they actually landed.

I agree entirely.
Most Airlines having flown the same leg since the year dot know more
or less the amount of fuel required at whatever weight to fly that
particular leg and would have loaded that amount of fuel
Your headwind claim could be vialbe except for a small but important
detail.
When we fly from A to B we get weather forecasts for the route we are
flying and the actual weather at the destination.
The forecast has the wind speeds and directions at the altitudes we
expect to fly at.

Oh and another thing confirms my initial apprehension, that the pilots
were both on their laptops when all of this overflying happened (if
today's CNN newsitem is to be believed). It tells me that they were
taking it easy having keyed in the entire flight path into the FMS,
trusting the A320 to commence descent, etc., with something going
awfully amiss with either the FMS itself or the way data was entered
into it. Whatever the reason, the pilots' attention and focus do
appear to have been less than desirable.

For which they are going to be called to account.

They have been called to account. The AP wire noted the following.

WASHINGTON – The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday revoked
the licenses of the two Northwest Airlines pilots who overshot their
Minneapolis destination by 150 miles.
The pilots — Timothy Cheney of Gig Harbor, Wash., the captain, and
Richard Cole of Salem, Ore., the first officer — told safety
investigators they were working on their personal laptop computers and
lost track of time and place.
The pilots, who were out of communications with air traffic
controllers for 91 minutes, violated numerous federal safety
regulations in the incident last Wednesday night, the FAA said in a
statement. The violations included failing to comply with air traffic
control instructions and clearances and operating carelessly and
recklessly, the agency said.
"You engaged in conduct that put your passengers and your crew in
serious jeopardy," FAA regional counsel Eddie Thomas said in a letter
to Cheney. Northwest Flight 188 was not in communications with
controllers or the airline dispatchers "while you were on a frolic of
your own. ... This is a total dereliction and disregard for your
duties."
A similar letter was sent to Cole.
The pilots said they were brought back to awareness when a flight
attendant contacted them on the aircraft's intercom. By then, they
were over Wisconsin at 37,000 feet. They turned the Airbus A320 with
its 144 passengers around and landed safely in Minneapolis.
The revocations, which apply to the pilots' commercial licenses, are
effective immediately, FAA said.
The pilots have 10 days to appeal the emergency revocations to the
National Transportation Safety Board.
The pilots' union at Delta Air Lines, which acquired Northwest last
year, had cautioned against a rush to judgment. The pilots told
investigators who interviewed them on Sunday that they had no previous
accidents or safety incidents.
The union had no immediate comment Tuesday.
Delta spokesman Anthony Black said in a statement: "The pilots in
command of Northwest Flight 188 remain suspended until the conclusion
of the investigations into this incident."
The NTSB has not taken or examined the laptops that the pilots were
using, spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz said Tuesday.
"The pilots said they were using them. So I don't know what any
examination of them" would do to further the investigation,
Lopatkiewicz said.
The pilots failed to respond to numerous radio messages from
controllers in Denver and Minneapolis. Other pilots also tried to
raise the Northwest pilots, and their airline's dispatchers sent text
messages by radio.
Cole and Cheney said they both had their laptops out while the first
officer, who had more experience with scheduling, instructed the
captain on monthly flight crew scheduling. They said they weren't
listening to the radio or watching cockpit flight displays during that
period. The plane's radio was also still tuned to the frequency used
by Denver controllers after the San Diego-to-Minneapolis flight had
flown beyond their reach.
The incident comes only a month after Transportation Secretary Ray
LaHood held a meeting in Washington on distracted driving, bringing
together researchers, regulators and safety advocates in response to
vehicle and train accidents involving texting and cell phone use.
Pilots and aviation safety experts said the episode is likely to cause
the NTSB and the FAA to take a hard look at the use of laptops and
other personal electronic devices in the cockpit.
There are no federal rules that specifically ban pilots' use of
laptops or other personal electronic devices as long as the plane is
flying above 10,000 feet, said Diane Spitaliere, an FAA spokeswoman.
Delta said in a statement that using laptops or engaging in activity
unrelated to the pilots' command of the aircraft during flight is
strictly against the airline's flight deck policies. The airline said
violations of that policy will result in termination.