Pilot Denies Crew Was Napping

[Are_grits_groceries]

The first officer of the Northwest Airlines jet that missed its destination by 150 miles says there was no fight in the cockpit, neither he nor the captain had fallen asleep and the passengers were never in any danger.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/24/us/AP-US-Northwest-Airport-Overflown.html?hp

I wouldn't allow them to fly until I knew what they were doing. This shouldn't be a game of 20 questions. Flying like they did requires an explanation so that the problem can be rectified.

Were they on some secret CIA mission? Did the ghost of Amelia Earhardt appear and fly the plane for a while?

[peekaloo]

1. Oh come on. They were arguing over the airline's policy of overshooting

your destination and ignoring radio contact while not fucking or sleeping.

Opinions vary from flight crew to flight crew. }(

[MH1]

2. "passengers were never in any danger"

as an admitted non-expert, that doesn't sound right to me. Weren't they in airspace that they shouldn't have been in, for at least around 15 minutes? If the pilots were both too distracted to notice they flew over Minneapolis/St Paul, wouldn't they have been too distracted to notice other things, such as a blinking warning on their consoles?

never in any danger, my ass.

[Poiuyt]

6. The Wisconsin National Guard was getting ready to shoot them down

I'd say that would put the passengers in danger.

[Dennis Donovan]

9. Of course they were in DANGER -the crew wasn't FLYING the aircraft!

If they didn't hear the repeated ATC communications for over an HOUR, who's to say they also would've ignored TCAS alarms??

[elocs]

3. Napping may be their best excuse since there are other things more unseemly

that a pilot or crew might be doing rather than paying attention to their job. Maybe they got distracted while texting?

[HopeHoops]

4. Maybe they were having sex.

I've lost track of time that way.

[Ikonoklast]

5. I agree. They weren't 'napping'.

They were soundly asleep.

[Liberal_in_LA]

13. Both? weird

[Are_grits_groceries]

7. They were heading into trouble.

Once the repeated attempts to contact the plane were unsuccessful, federal agencies increased their efforts. The North American Aerospace Defense Command readied four fighter jets and had them on “runway alert” in the vicinity, Mike Kucharek, a spokesman for the command, said Friday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/us/24plane.html?pagewanted=2&hpw

After 9/11, how long do you think they would have allowed this to continue? The 4 fighter jets weren't going up for grins. I'm surprised they didn't have 2 in the air shadowing the plane.

[madmom]

8. Here's my guess. One of the occupants of the cockpit was having

some kind of mental breakdown, be it marital, financial whatever, and they were being "talked" through it. They don't want it on his/her record.

[endless october]

10. the CVR will clear up this mystery pretty quickly. n/t

[RamboLiberal]

11. Nope - CVR was an older model that only recorded 30 minutes

No help.

[endless october]

12. that makes sense, then.

i wondered why they'd bother to lie if they knew the CVR would show their guilt anyway.

[Garbo 2004]

14. Is the 1st officer an idiot? When natl security agencies notice & prepare for the possibility

that they might be ordered to shoot your passengers out of the sky, it's a "serious event, from a safety issue."

Futhermore, the pilots ignored not only audio and data communications from traffic controllers and other pilots, but also the alerts in their own cockpit for over an hour. They evidently were oblivious to their situation and unresponsive to communications and systems warnings, so in what manner was it not a safety issue?

There's no "good" explanation for what happened. The pilots might be better off claiming they were abducted by aliens, rather than trying to brush it off as no big deal.