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Lost Northwest Pilots Were Trying Out New Software
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that two Northwest Airlines pilots who flew about 110 miles past their destination to the skies over Wisconsin as more than a dozen air-traffic controllers in three locations tried to get the plane's attention had taken out their personal laptops in the cockpit, a violation of airline policy, so the first officer could tutor the captain in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines, which acquired Northwest last fall. 'Both said they lost track of time,' said an interim report from the National Transportation Safety Board countering theories in aviation circles that the two pilots might have fallen asleep or were arguing in the cockpit. 'Using laptops or engaging in activity unrelated to the pilots' command of the aircraft during flight,' said a statement from Delta Airlines, 'is strictly against the airline's flight deck policies and violations of that policy will result in termination.' Industry executives and analysts said the pilots' behavior was a striking lapse for such veteran airmen who have a total of 31,000 flying hours of experience between them. In the case of Flight 188, 'Neither pilot was aware of the airplane's position until a flight attendant called about five minutes before they were scheduled to land and asked what was their estimated time of arrival,' the interim report said."
At todays fear of terrorism levels, they are lucky its just job termination - if they had flown over some sensitive and/or military area they could have been shot down... or not?
will need to know how to use the new scheduling system now!
I am surprised that anyone is able to keep their job. Where an honest mistake where no one was harmed causes someone to loose their career. I would feel more comfortable riding in a plain from a pilot who has a relatively good record and made a mistake and got severely corrected As they know the severity of their mistake, and are extra careful not to make an other one. Vs. a Pilot who has a good records but has gone too comfortable with their job, and will be likely to make their first mistake.
It reminds me when I first started working. I was cleaning out my old backup files. so I meant to do a rm -f *~ but me being green and not so careful I did an rm -f * ~
I Hit Ctrl-C after I realized it was taking way to long. However, I cleared out about 2 weeks of work. Plus my personal documents. Needless to say I learned to backup more freaklently and the value of a good source control system.
But If I were to get fired after that mistake and forced to switch careers then I wouldn't be able to apply my new learned methods.
That is why I cringe whenever there is a big mistake and people go well I hope that guy gets fired. Because the guy who did the mistake and especially if he was honest about it, would probably be so much more careful the nest time around. Who I would be more worried about is the guy who fired him. As part of the mistake is on him too. For not making sure they are safe guard in place.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Shouldn't they have picked up air traffic control yelling at them regardless?
Would have to assume they took off the headphones so they could hear each other as they discussed the computer app. I don't think there's a speaker in the cockpit from the tower.
Two questions come to mind:
1) what sort of urgency was placed on learning this new system? Were they being rushed? Did anyone suggest they hurry up and get each other up to speed on the app ("as soon as possible"/"whenever you get a chance"?) and they simply didn't have any personal time left to do it? (things like this tend to get pushed to be done on personal, rather than paid, time)
2) 110 miles in a jet? really? big detour? How long does it take a jet to travel 110 miles? This extended the flight what, a whole 15 minutes counting backtrack time? For a jet that's like a bus driver missing an exit and having to drive another 4 miles to the next cloverleaf and do a 180. Though it probably had a few more exaggerated side-effects, like passengers missing connecting flights (which happens too much anyway even when planes are on time) plus the cost of a few hundred pounds of fuel. But still, seems like its being overblown.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The difference between that and the mistake of a pilot is a potential several hundred lives.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
This all seems to be true, in general, of most industries these days.
Folks are generally expected to work longer than 40 hours, but not actually compensated for it. Your workload will virtually necessitate coming into the office early, or working through lunch, or staying late... They'll roll out new procedures or tools or toys, but there's no time allotted for training - you're expected to learn it before or after actual work hours. And the pay for those 40 hours that you are compensated for, is going down. Maybe not literally... Maybe you didn't actually take a pay cut (though plenty of people are)... But your wages aren't keeping up with bills/inflation/whatever.
This isn't only true in the airline industry. I'm seeing it in my own little corner of the IT world - not just my own job and work hours, but those of my co-workers as well.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
so the first officer could tutor the captain in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines
If this is really the case (which is still to be confirmed), then they were at least working for their company, making the best use of what they (incorrectly) thought was "available" time.
Keep this in mind, all of you reading slashdot at work !
You mean like unknown to the pilot emergencies that might be communicated to him by a traffic controller, such as change your altitude, you are on a collision course with x-other plane?
A pilot ignoring traffic controllers for over an hour is NOT a non-event.
A stewardess ran out of patience.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
That's why I'm not upset that they have been fired. At first, I thought it was a bit of an honest mistake, but those kind of mistakes are not allowed with a jet full of people.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Funny, then, that the method of travel which you insist is the safest actually results in the most deaths per mile traveled... I am not saying anything about you *personally* but this kind of poor risk judgment is what leads to all kinds of bad decisions. From what type of travel to choose, to what kind of medical treatment to choose, we humans are absolutely TERRIBLE at properly weighing risk. Say what you will about the fallibility of statistics, we all stand to gain if people put a little more stock in sound science as opposed to emotion-driven decision making.
that on this site we have so many people who believe Michael Moore?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
HAH! "for a job that technology has made almost fully automated... the larger the plane, the more they earn - even though it takes little more skill to pilot a jumbo jet."
$200K for the decades of training and experience to know what to do when one of the world's more complicated machines breaks, a mile in the air, with 200 souls on board. "Overpaid"? What a jackass.
That is also true, but let me explain something about aviation,
The system in place today relies on pilots/atc controllers reporting everything that happens that could cause an incident or accident (look up the definitions on google). A lot of the procedures in place today exist because there is the perception that you can report errors/distractions/whatever and that report will be used in order to improve the system so that that particular distraction/error/whatever will not occur again, and not that the report will be used to penalize you.
If you start penalizing and firing people for erring (and believe me, pilots do err, but a most of the times the redundancies of the systems in place prevent that error from becoming an incident/accident, and by redundancies I also mean the other pilot, not just automatic systems) then those reports will not occur and you will loose a very valuable way of knowing what happens in a flight.
These voluntary reports are what make aviation so safe these days...
B
Jesus Christ, I hate those christians!!
I'm a Network Engineer and a private pilot working toward ATP and I hear what you're saying with all 9 of your points. The pilots honestly expect us to believe that they took out their laptops and were so distracted by what they were doing that they lost track of time. No, sir. I don't buy it. This simply does not happen. Pilots are some of the most methodical and anal retentive people on the face of the planet. Taking time away from the duty of flying the aircraft (especially a large airliner with over 100 people onboard) simply doesn't happen unless the pilots are incapacitated. Yes, computers do much of the mundane work but the pilots are responsible for always triple-checking the aircraft's computers with respect to navigation, fuel state, engine performance, and a host of other factors that keep them busy. Even if one of the pilots took out his laptop for some reason (Showing off Windows 7?) the other pilot never would have done the same. As for missing the radio calls, you know as well as I do that not long after the flight is airborne, the non-PIC has trained their hearing to pick out his/her flight number from the ATC traffic like it was their mother's name. No sir, they were asleep. We all know the problems commercial pilots face. Long hours, little pay, waking up at 3:30am to open Starbucks and then jumping into the cockpit of an RJ at 9am. Pilot fatigue is reaching a critical stage and I believe this is just the beginning of events like this. Granted, both pilots falling asleep is going to be rare, but having at least one pilot taking a power nap in the cockpit is fairly common.
Mod parent up, please.
this is a great point to drive home: that the pilots had lost SA and positive control of the aircraft. had an emergency situation presented itself they would have been behind the aircraft, and that is not a good place to be. SA (situational awareness) is one of the key factors in aviation that differentiates the "that was a close one" moments and the "NTSB re-assembles my aircraft" moments.....
>Kind of sucks when you are designing a $20000 dollar circuit board in your first month and you put the
>PGA socket lands in backwards.
Shouldn't they have fired whoever was signing off on your work?
I can't imagine a company letting a newbie design a 200000 USD board and then not having a more experienced engineer sign off on it. For all the things wrong that were wrong at my past job, what you describe sure as hell wasn't one of them.
Let's see how you see this after 10 Years of commercial flying. My Brother is captain on an A320 for many years now. The problem is boredom. Most of those pilots are over-achiever until they have the job they want. And from then on, they have too much time while doing their jobs. Most of them start doing their office work in the cockpit, play games, watch movies, etc.
I don't want to say that the "computer thing" wasn't a silly excuse for something else, but think about it, most of them are so bored by their job that they start doing stupid things after some years (especially when they also have a lot of routine on the routes they fly every day).
Cheers,
-S
Shouldn't they have fired whoever was signing off on your work?
Who do you think fired him?
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...