By MICHELINE MAYNARD and MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: October 26, 2009
Any employee at a company that has gone through a merger knows how distracting it can be when the new owner imposes new rules. That distraction, not a nap, was what two Northwest Airlines pilots say caused them to fly far beyond the Minneapolis airport last week, federal investigators reported Monday.
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KGW.com, via Associated Press
First Officer Richard I. Cole, above, and the captain, Timothy B. Cheney, have been suspended during an inquiry.
The pilots told the National Transportation Safety Board that they missed their destination because they had taken out their personal laptops in the cockpit, a violation of airline policy, so the first officer, Richard I. Cole, could tutor the captain, Timothy B. Cheney, in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines, which acquired Northwest last fall.
The interim report from the safety board ran counter to theories in aviation circles last week that the two pilots might have fallen asleep or were arguing in the cockpit.
Each pilot, in separate interviews with the safety board that totaled more than five hours, denied those theories.
“Both said they lost track of time,” the report stated. It also said that the pilots had heard voices over their cockpit radios but ignored them.
The pilots passed breath analysis tests to check for alcohol use, and had a 17-hour break between the San Diego-to-Minneapolis trip and their previous flight.
Delta, in a statement Monday, hinted strongly that the lapse could cost both men their jobs.
“Using laptops or engaging in activity unrelated to the pilots’ command of the aircraft during flight,” the statement said, “is strictly against the airline’s flight deck policies and violations of that policy will result in termination.”
The pilots remain suspended until completion of the airline’s investigation.
The impromptu tutoring session apparently caused Mr. Cole and Mr. Cheney to ignore air-traffic controllers for about 90 minutes on Wednesday night, and forget to begin preparations for landing in Minneapolis. Instead, the plane flew about 110 miles to the skies over Eau Claire, Wis., as more than a dozen air-traffic controllers in three locations serving Denver and Minneapolis tried to get the pilots’ attention.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command readied four fighter jets and had them on “runway alert” in the vicinity, according to a command spokesman, Michael D. Kucharek.
A flight attendant finally called the cockpit when the plane did not begin its scheduled descent to Minneapolis to ask when it might arrive, according to the report. The plane, which carried 144 passengers and three flight attendants as well as the two pilots en route from San Diego, made a loop in the sky over Wisconsin and returned to Minneapolis, where it landed safely.
Industry executives and analysts said the pilots’ behavior was a striking lapse for such veteran airmen. The two pilots have a total of 31,000 flying hours of experience between them. Mr. Cheney, of Gig Harbor, Wash., has been at Northwest since 1985, while Mr. Cole, of Salem, Ore., has been at the airline since 1997.
The pilots did not respond to phone messages left at their homes.
Robert W. Mann Jr., a veteran industry analyst, said of the pilots’ explanation: “It’s inexcusable.”
Delta acquired Northwest last fall, and since then has begun integrating the two airlines’ operations, like reservation systems and airport check-in counters and kiosks.
While Delta still operates flights under the Northwest name, it has begun switching pilots to the Delta system to request assignments. Though similar to Northwest’s scheduling system, the Delta procedure uses different acronyms and a different computer program, said a pilot who has used both systems but who requested anonymity because he not authorized to speak publicly. He said the Northwest system was “more intuitive.”
Pilots and other flight crewmembers bid, through computer programs, on the flights they wish to operate. Their requests are often awarded on seniority.
Flight schedules are of high importance to pilots because many commute from their hometowns to bases at airline hubs. They arrange their non-airline activities, like second jobs and volunteer programs, according to the ease with which they can reach the city where they are based.
Many have memorized the flights they can take from home to reach their bases, and often base their work schedules depending on how many days they will be away from home.
But the new scheduling system may be only a first step. As a result of the merger, some pilots at Northwest face the possibility that they may be operating out of new cities, meaning they will have to re-arrange their personal lives as well as their work schedules, a person familiar with the airline’s plans said.
In fact, Northwest cautioned pilots earlier this year not to become distracted by the changes that were in store. “While we cannot minimize distractions from our personal or professional lives, we can mitigate their effects so they do not affect the safety of our airline,” a memorandum from the airline said. “Leave distractions about personal, corporate or other external issues outside of the flight deck.”
The airline bans pilots from working on personal computers in the cockpit, where they are supposed to concentrate on the multiple gauges and controls required in flight.
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 report said. By that time, the plane, which should have begun its descent into Minneapolis about half an hour earlier, was still at 37,000 feet and more than 100 miles beyond its destination.
Flight attendants have not had keys to open a plane’s cockpit door since the 2001 terrorist attacks, and there is no procedure in which they regularly check on pilots. The cabin crew communicates by phone or through chimes that can be heard in the passenger cabin.
The aircraft’s cockpit voice recorder captured only the last 30 minutes of conversation, some of it on the ground after landing. Investigators said they would try to use the flight data recorder, which captured the entire flight, including use of radios, to determine the level of crew activity.
Micheline Maynard reported from Hanover, N.H., and Matthew L. Wald from Washington.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/us/27plane.html