The answer?….well, it depends who you talk to.
The Dallas Morning News’ always excellent aviation blog offers up a lengthy explanation of the Northwest Airlines flight that overshot Minneapolis last month based on an AP story citing flight transcripts as well as an email from a friend of one of the pilots. (This posted on Friday, Nov 27)
In a nutshell, it sounds like the pilots are saying that the overshot was due to a miscommunication between pilot and co-pilot. They say that one pilot left the cockpit for a break and during that time, the pilot flying the plane switched radio frequencies. When the pilot returned to the cockpit, the flying pilot neglected to tell him about the frequency change. Then they got into a discussion about Delta’s new flight bidding process. One pilot fired up his laptop to show the other how to bid for certain flights, and all of a sudden, they realized they were past Minneapolis. Oh, and there was a 100 mph tail wind which got them to Minneapolis earlier than expected.
I’m not a pilot, so it’s not my place to comment, but I think it is interesting to read the comments from other pilots on this blog post….sounds to me like most of them are still skeptical of this story.
In any case, for now the pilots have had their licenses revoked by the FAA, so they won’t be in the cockpit of any plane you’ll be flying any time soon…if ever…
Don’t Forget! BOOK ALL YOUR ONLINE TRAVEL VIA LINKS FROM THE TICKET!
airtran.com | delta.com | Hotwire
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