THE TWO FLIGHT OFFICERS ON THE NORTHWEST AIRLINES plane that overshot the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport by 150 miles have told the Federal investigators that they were both engrossed in working scheduling planning on their laptop computers when they lost contact with air traffic control. (See the Firegeezer report from Oct. 23 HERE.)
The Associated Press is reporting this afternoon HERE:
(The pilots) told investigators that they both had their laptops out while the first officer, who had more experience with scheduling, instructed the captain on monthly flight crew scheduling. The pilots were out of communication with air traffic controlers and their airline for more than an hour and didn’t realize their mistake until contacted by a flight attendant, the board said.
The pilots acknowledged that while they were engaged in working on their laptops they weren’t paying attention to radio traffic, messages from their airline or their cockpit instruments, the board said. That’s contrary to one of the fundamentals of commercial piloting, which is to keep attention focused on monitoring messages from controllers and watching flight displays in the cockpit.
