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'Distracted' Pilots Miss Airport by 150 Miles

Source: The Associated Press

Posted: 10/23/09 12:15PM

Filed Under: Travel

WASHINGTON (AP) - Two Northwest Airlines pilots who overshot their destination by 150 miles before turning back should have had numerous warnings as they approached and passed Minneapolis: cockpit displays, controllers trying repeatedly to reach, the city lights twinkling below.

Yet the pilots didn't discover their mistake until a flight attendant in the cabin contacted them by intercom, said a source close to the investigation who wasn't authorized to talk publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. By that time, the plane was over Eau Claire, Wis., and the pilots had been out of communication with air traffic controllers for over an hour.

The crew told authorities they were distracted during a heated discussion over airline policy, the Federal Aviation Administration said. But federal officials are investigating whether pilot fatigue might be to blame.

NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway said Thursday investigators hadn't yet questioned the pilots and didn't know whether it was possible they had fallen asleep. The pilots have been suspended from flying by their airline while it, too, investigates.

The plane, en route from San Diego with 144 passengers and a crew of five, passed over its destination of Minneapolis at 37,000 feet just before 9 p.m. EDT Wednesday. Contact with controllers wasn't established until 14 minutes later, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the incident.

As of Thursday, NTSB investigators had not yet examined the plane's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, which were being sent to Washington for analysis.

"It just doesn't make any sense," said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va. "The pilots are saying they were involved in a heated conversation. Well, that was a very long conversation."

Ben Berman, an airline pilot and former chief of major accident investigations at the NTSB, said it becomes second nature for pilots to know when they need to begin landing preparations.

Those preparation should have begun when the flight was still 100 miles or more away from Minneapolis, he said. It would require a fairly dramatic event to lose track of that kind of awareness, he said.

Shop talk "pretty clearly wasn't all that was going on," Berman said.

The bright lights of Minneapolis should have alerted the pilots that they were over their destination, just as the dimmer lights of Eau Claire should have warned them they were in the wrong place, experts said.

While the passengers were apparently unaware what was happening as they passed their destination, police on the ground were preparing for the worst and the Air National Guard had put fighter jets on alert at two locations.

Andrea Allmon, who had been traveling from San Diego on business, didn't know anything was amiss.

"Everybody got up to get their luggage, and the plane was swarmed by police as we were getting our bags down from the overhead bins," she said.

She said they were kept on the plane briefly while police talked to the crew. Allmon said she was "horrified" to learn what had happened and it was "unbelievable to me that they weren't paying attention. Just not paying attention."

The two pilots have been suspended from flying while Delta Air Lines Inc. conducts an internal investigation, said Anthony Black, a spokesman for the Atlanta-based airline, which acquired Northwest last year. He refused to name them or give further details.

The FAA is updating rules governing how many hours commercial pilots may fly and remain on duty. The NTSB also cautioned government agencies this week about the risks of sleep apnea contributing to transportation accidents.

In January 2008, two go! airlines pilots fell asleep for at least 18 minutes during a midmorning flight from Honolulu to Hilo, Hawaii. The plane passed its destination and was heading out over open ocean before controllers raised the pilots. The captain was later diagnosed with sleep apnea.

Air traffic controllers in Denver had been in contact with the Northwest pilots as they flew over the Rockies, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said. But as the plane got closer to Minneapolis, she said, "the Denver center tried to contact the flight but couldn't get anyone." That was just before 8 p.m.

Denver controllers notified their counterparts in Minneapolis, who also tried to reach the crew without success, Brown said.

The FAA had notified the military, which was ready to scramble as many as four Air National Guard fighter jets, but none took to the air.

AP Airlines Writer Joshua Freed and AP writer Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

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