The unique aspect of our business is that you are often only one short lapse, which might last only a second, from disaster or ruin.

Those who make it through a full career without a significant dustup have made a remarkable achievement.

I hope these guys can recover and contribute to their families' and their profession's welfare once again.

If the FAA takes certificate action against and Delta terminates these two gents and, then reality is hardly likely.

Think about... It takes years of experience to get to where these two were in their career.... but micro seconds to have it all vaporized.

Rainboe in the cockpit?
 

I refer of course to the virulently neuro-toxic (and blatantly denied by Boeing) windshield fluid that used to be standard equip in many an aircraft until it was phased out.

I've been awakened 2 hours after going into a sleep cycle having been up for the past 24! - I clearly and succinctly explained how to log in the the system and activate the remote systems. The only thing was, this person was not authorized to have any access whatsoever and had been in fact terminated just hours before, what saved me was that I had totally mangled the system passwords I gave him!! I had really no recollection of the conversation and luckily they started playing it back before I could deny same and I was thus able to claim 'I did it on purpose to allow the bugger to catch himself'

Make no mistake, you can be totally 'out of it' and perform incredibly lucid acts and seem quite coherent but unable to react to 'out of frame' events, like an amber flashing warning light. It does put the whole 'checks and balances' thing totally on its head, and other than (or perhaps in addition to) cognition detection and monitoring devices which I have invented, we perhaps need to ensure that duty rosters are made 'uneven' meaning, a pilot with 10 hrs would be paired with one with just 2 or 3 - and of course commute to work be factored in. This would help to ensure that you dont have two pilots, each responsible for the other as checks and balances, but both knackered.

I would be curious to see if any toxicology tests were done on the pilots, other than the breathalyser (which they both passed) I've been some time concerned about a scenario where pilots (and possibly CC and PAX) being exposed to toxic incapacitating agents. At low doses, the only symptoms would be a narrowing of vision, extra salivation (drooling) and mental decognition - higher dosages of course, convulsions, cessation of breathing, involuntary bowel movements and death.

It may well be as GreenEyedTraveler stated pre-occupation/distraction (possibly enhanced by lack of sleep) not enough to cause overt nodding off, but enough to cause disabling in much the way that alcohol would.

I expect this case to be spun much like "missing your exit on the freeway" - the pilots will be disciplined in some minor way but be back in the air by years end. The administration will go along with pushing it under the carpet (lest the struggling economic 'recovery'* sputters and stalls)



*what recovery? why the one where the banks made record profits, despite being bankrupt only months and weeks before! while unemployment approaches 11% like a pedophile approaches kids in a playground!

I wouldn't bet the farm on that. While unrelated incidents, but two with the same carrier in the same week.

I'm curious to know how ALPA will deal with this and the inadvertent taxiway arrival incident.

It has been noted that the crew had a 19 hour layover and was on day 2 of a five day trip. As they were Minneapolis-based, they would have started the trip the day before and made their way to San Diego, a two hour time zone change. No excuse for not being rested, right?

I don't know about others, but I've always had difficulty adjusting to the 18-24 hour layover, particularly with 2 hour or more time zone changes. This crew would have arrived late in the evening the night before and gone to bed, tired and being on a Minneapolis-time body clock. Going to bed on their natural sleep cycle would probably result in waking up at 8 AM or so with a full day, unable to sleep, before showing up that evening for a full duty cycle, then performing a longish, 4-5 hour cross country flight. Regardless of how much time off they had, they were probably tired when they started (fatigued?)

For me, 13-14 hours is the right layover time. That allows a relaxed meal, some socializing maybe, a little reading, Ppruning or TV, and a full rest from which I can awake ready to go to work, alert and rested. Too much outside those parameters and adjustments must be made, and those adjustments are not always easy to make, nor do they always go as planned. Goes with the territory, I suppose, and we all have to tough it out sometimes.

I'm not concluding that this was a factor on this flight, just that it's something to think about, and maybe provide a little more encouragement to make rest a priority, and if too fatigued to fly, whether one has a good excuse or not, dont.

The copilot is on record having said they weren´t sleeping, they weren´t arguing, they weren´t fighting. They passed the breath test, so they weren´t drinking. So, what were they doing?

The last sentence of this Wall Street Journal article suggests "another theory more likely than dozing off" without elaborating further:

NTSB to Interview Northwest Pilots - WSJ.com

What ever the distraction, I´m inclined to expect something embarrassing by now. If it wasn´t, they would have come out with it already.

I thinks a hearing will be convened on Tuesday. We should have some interesting details then.

For all those bleating why the cabin crew didn´t call the pilots, and for those who´d slap their CC (hot flight management there glueball) for calling, from post #91:

"Would you guys like a night cap?"

Good recall JUUD: Assuredly, this must be good news for the thousands of Freight Dog pilots who are still having to fly without cabin crew to make coffee and ding-dong their cockpits every 20 minutes! :D

- do I assume they are locking the flight deck door?:ugh:

Jeez - I've seen some really agressive cardboard boxes.

From a friend who works at NWA. Things are pointing toward missing a hand off, a bad microphone and or radio, possibly not setting the up the radio heads correctly and poor no-radio procedures.

I think you should add 'and deficient navigational skills'?

EVERY jet pilot knows you start descent about 20 minutes before landing, surely?

Ben there...

yes I agree with you...13-14 hour overnights are about right. 10 hours at the hotel minimum in my eyes. More is a waste of my productivity...less and i'm not up to snuff for flying the next day.

I take what the pilots have said at face value. I hope they write up a a nice NASA form with the truth.

I hope they don't have any punishment against them except to make a video about what happened so others don't screw up.

I've seen pilots ''zone out'' before. Sad and funny.

BOAC Know you're only kidding, but I have seen crabs(large!) and snakes in the cabin on pax a/c; heard of horses, large cats (leopards I think), monkeys, parrots loose in cargo cabin; and real live robbers in suitcases in baggage holds.
Not to mention refugees in wheel wells.
Be careful, you are not alone up there (sometimes).

Just curious, are there two or three VHF's, two or three audio select's, and multiple mic's on that airplane?

Lets see... missing a handoff for 1:10 minutes plus? Ooooo kay.?.?

While at it, not that I'm suggesting it, but on the surface, to the casual observer it could appear that NWA SOPs may not have been adhered to:confused:. It may appear to the gallery that there was a loss of Situational Awareness:confused:. It also seems that they may not have followed Loss Communications Procedures, that is, if they had Situational Awareness as it related to their prediciment:confused::suspect::confused:.

How do you explain the above to the passengers, fellow crewmembers, that entrusted their lives in the hands of the flightcrew, let alone the company, and the FAA?

Looks like it's gonna be a pretty hard sell. Hope they can pull a rabbit out of their hats.

ACARS???
 

How many ACARS messages were sent to the crew? How did all those get missed?

You've all got it wrong. They loaded DTW, their other hub, iso MSP into the FMS. The error only came to light when the F/A intervened.

Can somebody remind me where the rumor about arguning about company proceedures came from?

Unfortunately I was accepting this as second hand fact.:ouch: