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Title: |
US probes crew who flew 240km off course |
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Posted on: |
24/10/2009 1:23 am |
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Were the pilots distracted? Catching up on their sleep?
Federal investigators in the US struggled to determine what the crew of a Northwest Airlines jetliner were doing at 11,000 metres as they sped 240 kilometres past their Minneapolis destination, and military jets readied to chase them.
Unfortunately, the cockpit voice recorder may not tell the tale.
A report released late on Friday said the pilots passed Breathalyser tests, showing they had not drunk alcohol, and they were apologetic after Wednesday night's amazing odyssey.
They said they had been having a heated discussion about airline policy. Aviation safety experts and other pilots were sceptical they could have become so consumed with shop talk that they forgot to land an aircraft carrying 140 passengers.
The most likely possibility, they said, is that the pilots simply fell asleep somewhere along their route from San Diego.
"It certainly is a plausible explanation," said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation.
New recorders retain as much as two hours of cockpit conversation and other noise, but the older model aboard Northwest's Flight 188 includes just the last 30 minutes - only the very end of Wednesday night's flight after the pilots realised their error over Wisconsin and were heading back to Minneapolis.
They had flown through the night as air traffic controllers in two states and pilots of other planes over a wide swath of the mid-continent tried to get their attention by radio, data message and mobile phone with no response.
On the ground, worried officials alerted National Guard jets to go after the airliner from two locations, although none of the military planes got off the runway.
With worries about terrorists still high, even after contact was re-established, air traffic controllers asked the crew to prove who they were by executing turns.
"Controllers have a heightened sense of vigilance when we're not able to talk to an aircraft. That's the real |
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