My recollection is that Delta wanted Continental to not report the incident. In those unenlightened days (1987) many Continental flight crews were considered s**bs (of course, now they are fully rehabilitated and have ALPA pins).
When the incident occured, Delta had little in the way of overwater procedures or experience. Plotting charts were not used and navigation was somewhat casual. Seems like Delta was using an Omega and somehow skipped 60 miles over to the next track. After a very near miss, Delta came up on guard and got Continental to switch to 123.45 or something similar.
Delta tried to persuade Continental to keep things quiet but Continental said the pax had seen the near miss and were about to break the door down (figuratively speaking, of course). A Canadian CP-140 Aurora recorded the exchange, perhaps along with the advice of everyone who was on the frequency, over twenty aircraft from what I remember.
The Delta TriStar was subsequently lead to shore by visually trailing a Pan Am A-310 under the command of a guy named Skip Coolidge. I seem to recall that at the hearing, the feds tried to quiz Captain Coolidge on the activities of his flight engineer. The two pilot glass cockpit was obviously a novel concept at the time. Sadly, Skip Coolidge expired of a heart attack a few months after the hearing.
After the feds had the hearing, Delta adopted most of Pan Am's overwater procedures (ten minute plot, circle, underline and slash waypoints etc.).
At least, that's the way I remember it...
______________________________________________
Delta-Continental Near-Miss
Peter G. Neumann <
[email protected]>
Fri 4 Sep 87 13:24:57-PDT
The 4 Sept 87 papers note that the Delta L-1011 flight on 8 July 1987 that
was 60 miles off course actually came within 30 feet of colliding with the
Continental 747, and that four of the five safety measures that had been
previously recommended had been ignored, including plotting the expected
course on a map -- in fact, the appropriate chart was not even on board.
The cause of the near-miss is attributed to false data entry of the inertial
navigation heading. Both the USA and Canada announced stepped-up use of
redundant checks in the navigational procedures...
From:
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/5.32.html#subj5