The fiasco surrounding the two Northwest pilots who overshot the Minneapolis International Airport by 150 miles has the beginnings of a final resolution this morning but I’m still not buying it. As everyone knows by now the pilots claim they were going over monthly flight crew schedules on their laptops and that they “lost track of time and place.” Originally they had said they were having an arguement over airline policy - a story that likely couldn’t hold up under the intense questioning I’m sure they endured. ‘What airline policy did you argue about?’, ‘Have you had other arguements about airline policy?’, ‘How did the arguement start?’, etc. That house of cards would collapse quickly under even the least cursory investigation. I have a better theory of what actually transpired.
I was in the military for 10 years and I did many a shift of guard duty during that time. More often than not I did these tours of duty with at least one other person, sometimes even three or four. It depended on the situation. In the instances where there were at least two of us there would be an agreement: “I’m gonna get some shuteye. Wake me in a few hours and then you can catch some Zs too.” This is what I believe happened on that flight.
One of the pilots tells the other that he needs to get some sleep and asks him to keep an eye on things and to wake him when it becomes necessary. Well, the other pilot falls asleep too and now both of them are ‘unavailable’ to whoever is trying to communicate with them. Keep in mind that one – or possibly both – of them most likely have headsets on which I imagine are designed to keep out any outside noise.
When it became apparent to the flight attendants (and some passengers) that the plane had passed the Twin Cities one of the attendants tried to reach them by phone – no answer. Then they knocked on the cabin door to the cockpit – again no answer. Finally, in a desperate attempt to contact them, the attendant spoke to them over the plane’s intercom system. This time they got an answer.
I find it absolutely impossible to believe that the pilots were not aware of either of the two previous attempts by the attendants to get their attention or that they failed to notice the attempts at contact by the air traffic controllers at Denver and Minneapolis airports. It just doesn’t seem very likely that all these efforts could have went by unnoticed.
It’s far more plausible that they both fell asleep, woke up at the point during the initial effort by the flight attendants to reach them by phone, and, realizing their mistake knew they had to come up with a story. Neither of the pilots had tuned the plane’s radio frequency to the Minneapolis airport who would have been trying to reach them so that likely explains why they were out of communication for an hour.
So, here’s what I’m saying happened. The pilots are both asleep, the phone in the cockpit rings and awakes one or both of them. They realize they’ve made a horrible error and know that an explanation will be necessary. Then there’s a knock on the cockpit’s door. “Don’t answer that! We’ve still got to get our story straight.” When the attendant speaks to them directly over the intercom the pilots know that a panic will happen if they don’t answer. That’s what I believe happened.
What do you think?
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