THE 149 PASSENGERS ONBOARD NORTHWEST AIRLINES FLIGHT #188 got more air miles for their buck last night when their plane overshot their destination by 150 miles. The flight was scheduled to travel from San Diego to Minneapolis/St. Paul, but when they approached the Twin Cities they kept on going, traveling 150 miles on into Wisconsin before they turned around and returned to their field of choice.
Compounding the in-flight drama was the sudden radio silence from the plane as it passed over the airfield that contiued for 78 minutes. Air traffic control started asking pilots in other flights to see if they could rouse the Northwest crew on their radios as #188 was tracked by radar and being handed off from one traffic control area to another.
U. S. Air Force jets were being scrambled to pursue and intercept what might have been a skyjacking.
The Associated Press ran this video summary of the flight plight:
The Wall Street Journal adds further:
Federal officials are working to sort out whether pilots of a Northwest Airlines flight dozed off or were simply distracted Wednesday night when they fell out of contact with air-traffic controllers for more than an hour and overshot their destination by 150 miles.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating, among other things, whether the two pilots fell asleep at the controls. The pair told law-enforcement officials who interviewed them upon landing in Minneapolis — and apparently told fellow pilots later — that they had been engaged in a “heated discussion over airline policy and they lost situational awareness,” according to the NTSB.
Read the complete article HERE.
The WSJ also produced this video interview with the reporter that first broke the story:
