Landing on a taxiway is one thing. Not a small thing mind, but sorta-kinda understandable. Sometimes an approach drops you off on an angle to the runway and maybe the lights don’t look as blue as they ought to.
But it’s a little harder to understand how a pair of ATP rated pilots overshot their destination by 150 miles:
The pilots never responded to repeated efforts to contact them from about 7 p.m., when the plane was over western Kansas, until 8:14 p.m. when the plane was in Wisconsin, about 150 miles northeast of the MSP. The plane flew over the Twin Cities at 7:58 p.m.
The situation became increasingly alarming from a safety and security standpoint because the pilots could have been in distress or the plane hijacked, said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Tony Molinari…
The FAA said the FBI and airport police interviewed the crew, who said they “were in a heated discussion over airline policy and they lost situational awareness.” The crew requested that the plane be allowed to return to MSP. The NTSB is scheduling an interview with the crew.
That should be an interesting interview. A flight from Sandy Eggo to Minneapolis would most likely cruise in the mid-30′s. I honestly don’t know how they do it in the airlines, but in a fighter I used “double altitude plus 10 miles” as a cruise let-down point. So say they were at Flight Level 330, they should have started their let-down some 70-odd miles west of the airport. Not figuring out you’ve overshot by 150 miles means that you’ve really gone over 200 miles off course, or the better part of half an hour. With ATC hollering at you for more than half the time.
That must have been some “discussion” the flight crew was having.
Discussion probably sounded like this
Captain: ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz grog grog zzzzzzzzzzz
First Officer: ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz pppsssshhhhhh zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Yeah, I don’t thin a ASRS form is going to get them out of this one.
Whatever “airline policy” they were discussing, it obviously didn’t involve an admonition not to take the paying passengers on a joy ride over the Midwest or a reminder that being out of contact with ATC for over an hour is not a great idea.
When you think about it, it’s a lousy excuse but probably no worse than any other one they could have come up with.
So you know, good luck to them and all.
By back of the envelope shorthand, should be something like 3x cruise alt plus 1 nm for every 10kts of airspeed to bleed off (assuming you want to be 250KIAS at 10,000, of course). So TOD from FL330 cruise at 300KIAS could be something like 104nm, plus or minus a few miles for minor fine-tuning (less for headwind, more for tailwind). But I’m no ATP, so your mileage may vary.
In regards to landing on the taxi way at 6am in completely clear weather after a 9 hour flight from Rio how do you keep your job? Good thing no one else was taxing. In a Heavy. At the busiest airport in the US. On a business morning. It would have been ugly. Were these guys out the night before? Or on the tail end of an 18 hour leg with no sleep? Oy.
I fly through Atlanta a lot and when I read about that a bit back it gave me a cold feeling in my stomach. I’ll be there again in a few weeks, and I’m hoping this will have everyone paying a bit more attention.
At FL330 how long does it take to get 200 miles off course?
Lex already mentioned that. =) Half an hour or so, if they remained at econ cruise speed (roughly .78 mach for the A320) and altitude.
Thanks. I saw that when I reread his post a 2nd time. I had a retard moment. Too bad there is not delete button.
What I want to know is if the passengers got their extra miles credited to their frequent flier program!
If I did that, I’d be standing at the end of a long green table staring at a bunch of very senior folks, wondering what the number to truck-driving school is.
Wonder where the Flight Attendants were through all of this? Or maybe one or more of same were part of the, um, discussion in the front office.
Late arrival at the gate tends to stir the passenger angst a bit, which I’m sure was just above a mild buzz at some point. But nobody called up front to inquire? Hmmm. Okay.
Very bad timing, in that the FAA is being asked to permit pilots to sleep on the job.
Pilot Naps Considered
The agency has been exploring the idea ever since a study by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration two years ago suggested that passengers would be safer if a pilot was bright-eyed when his skills were most needed, at landing.
That is, presuming they are awake at landing time.
It gets worse – any arrival into a hub is going to use a STAR. Every hub STAR I’ve seen has charted altitude restrictions for at least one point – usually 10-12k and 250. These are part of the arrival and appear automatically when you select the arrival in the FMS, or if the restriction is charted as “EXPECT”, every pilot will enter the restriction, and the PM will crosscheck it. A top-of-descent point is displayed automatically on the moving map, and in the case of the A320, with a touch of a button at the appropriate time the AP/AT combo will fly the entire arrival, seamlessly transition from Mach to IAS, and then hit the restriction at the charted speed.
All we have to do up front is feed the dog.
I would think a discussion of airline policy so heated that the pilots lost that much situational awareness would leave cuts, bruises and a ripped epaulet or two. Of course, if I’m right, it’ll make it that much easier for the Chief Pilot to rip those soft shoulder boards off their uniform shirts. In today’s world, would probably have been better to ‘fess up, admit they fell asleep and try an aggressive, “it’s not our fault, it’s the system that did it to us” defense. With this approach, once the CVR tapes prove they’re lying – assuming the pilots didn’t erase them – it’ll all be over except for the embarrassment.
That would imply there is ever a lack of complete unanimity in a cockput when it comes to “airline policy”. My experience, with my friends that bailed for the friendly skies, is that is a world of complete group think — of universal victimhood. The oppressed masses, yearning to be free, seeking to throw off the hobnailed boot of management from their necks.
The pilots would not have to erase them, the CVR only records the last 30 minutes of flight. What’ll be on tape is the aircrew in touch with ATC, turning around and heading back to Minneapolis, getting vectored into the final approach, and so on. No incriminating snoring or fighting.
Heinlein lives!
YES! I knew I liked Lex. I miss Heinlein and his merry band of characters.
Makes me even more grateful for the pilot I had recently. We tried to land in San Diego but turned back due to fog after a half-hour of circling the bay. Company originally planned to divert to LA, but apparently was overruled by pilot who said we were diverting to Las Vegas “due to fuel concerns and a guaranteed landing.” I doubt it was super-close in terms of low fuel, but it seemed to very-uneducated-me that the sounds of the engines changed not a bit after we began to descend (as if he were saving fuel by making all the turns and similar positioning adjustments powered by changes in altitude–straightaways didn’t seem to descend very fast, but turns dropped us noticeably. Would that make sense, or did I just notice the landing more since I was tired of being on the plane so long after expecting a short flight?).
Then again, now that I reread it, I may just be babbling. It’s too late at night. Goodnight!
Coming back to LA from Philadelphia in Dec ’74 we had the same situation. Pilot put us into Vegas for the night, with no noticeable changes in airspeed/routing. I’m betting he was a few steps ahead of the game and didn’t need to be told “Sorry, not tonight”.
We all got single occupancy in a decent hotel (not motel), breakfast the next day, and, once back on the jet, an apology from the senior Flight Attendant for not having cleaned the cabin. Like we cared.
The airline took care of us and got us home safe. They done good…
I catch Flight Level 390 from time to time. He’s an airline pilot and his descriptions of life on the line as a commercial pilot frequently rival the stories our host tells. What he says about conservation of momentum, flying, etc. Well, they’re darned interesting.
Well, once you’re no longer holding, the turns stop by definition, and it’s a pretty straight shot from Sandy Eggo to Vegas, baby. Keeping the throttles up on the decent would seem to mean that they were more pressed for time than speed – you can save a lot of gas in a turbine powered aircraft during a decent with the throttles back. Might have been a crew rest calculation for the next day.
Believe it or not, I think we made at least two turns going into Las Vegas. I’ve been there a couple times on a west-to-east flight and I think that’s normal…. not that I trust my memory.
I can’t believe someone in back didn’t notice what was going on. I’ve always seen at least one guy in back with the blackberry GPS by the window tracking progress and hitting the in flight progress on the web. Me, I track airport to airport with “ok, we could it make it there, yep, good divert, nope too short” constantly rolling in my head.
On the bright side, two new, no – FOUR new job openings for aircrew. Ain’t the seniority lineal system a great eye-deer? $1250 a month unemployment is gonna be sticker shock for those 4.
I started taking my Garmin hand held GPS on flights years ago. It’s mainly for hiking and hunting (has a radio too) but will give you altitude, airspeed, miles to go and ETE. It also has a map and compass function so you can see where you are. I also listen in to the ATC freq. if it is available. You could bet I would have been jumping up and down wondering why we had not started our descent about 70nm out.
Another neat function is the “max speed” readout. Took it on the bullet train several years ago and got a readout of 169mph.
This is one of those “go directly to jail” moments where one steps right out of the cockpit and heads straight for the unemployment office and begins the paperwork–never mind the debrief..
Can you say “buh-bye”?
You never know about firings these days. The controller at our West Palm Beach airport fell asleep late one night and an incoming jet had to land in Miami. He wasn’t fired.
How long have train engineers had the big “are you awake” button?
The one that must be touched every few minutes, or else interesting things happen.
What are you going to do with an “are you awake” button in an airplane? The darned thing is going to land one way or another anyway, would it help to sound an alarm and on the PA ask if anybody in the cabin has experience as a pilot? With that locked door, I doubt even the stewardesses have access.
From an uncle who runs logistics at the Union Pacific yard in Norfolk, NE, trains have had deadman switches in them since at least the late 70′s. There was rarely a week went by that a short-haul train with one engineer had to be intercepted and stopped due to a dead (heart attack, mostly) engineer and a lunch box with a brick in it on the pedal.
With the advent of some new monitoring devices the train pretty much stops itself. However, the number of dead engineers remains the same and there’s still the logistics of getting to and restarting a stopped train while that single steel road remains blocked for other traffic.
As a side note, I also found that the major railroads employ a veritable fleet of head-shrinkers, psychs, grief counselors, and the like because as an engineer you can see the car on the tracks for a couple of minutes before you turn it into a wadded-up tinfoil can. And there’s not a darned thing you can do to prevent it from happening with a quarter-million tons of cargo behind you.
I had opined that if they hired psychopaths for the engineering jobs then they’d save a whole lotta money on the grief counselors. I was gobsmacked when my uncle deadpanned, “it’s been thought of, but management was concerned about their being at the company Christmas party.”
– Max
Don’t most cell phones have an alarm function? Geeze, most even have the *snooze* feature. What the hay? They know how to fly airplanes but not how to use a cell alarm?
Don’t most cell phones have an alarm function? Geeze, most even have the *snooze* feature. What the hay? They know how to fly airplanes but not how to use a cell alarm?
They said on the radio this morning the NTSB is going to review the cockpit voice recorders. That should be interesting.
Regardless, they should be fired and the airline should be fined. Anyone who has trained them in the last year should be fired. This is just complete crap and really undermines what little confidence I have in flying these days.
Oh come on now guys, you know how controversial those “sterile cockpit” rules are, I am sure they were mashing out the finer points of those rules. Easy to let time get away from you.
I mention this at my place (http://voicefromthenoise.blogspot.com/)and an incident of a Navy aircrew doing much the same thing, the only one awake in the War Hoover was the AW. But that was back in the day when the Navy Air arm could still spell ASW.
BT: Jimmy T sends.
Some of us spell it, eat it, sleep it, live it, and love it. Still.
On the longer United flights, you can listen to cockpit radio transmissions on Ch 9 – THAT would have been interesting to a knowledgeable pax……
One reason I frequently fly United is that feature and the fact that most of their equipment is Boeing.
+1 to x-airboss. Channel 9 is the best thing going. Plus I’ve got a thing for Boeing.
Article in Minn newspaper says plane was at FL370. Also says that 4 fighters were alerted but not launched, AND that police were the 1st to board when the plane DID land. Not only did the pilots fall asleep, they had everybody on the ground wondering if the airliner was hijacked and maybe doing the ‘jet-into-cruise missile’ trick.
I was coming home from Hawaii on United one time and listening to Channel 9. Somewhere east of LA I heard a controller call up to our flight 2 or 3 times with no response. I was considering how to politely suggest to the FA she might want to, um, visit, the cockpit when the FO finally responded and took the hand-off to the next Center.
The funny thing is I was never affraid to fly before but after getting my private certificate, I know just enough to occasionally be worried.
Some taxiways are more like taxiways than others.
One poor guy landed on the big parallel runway somewhere in Turkey, which might even have been Incirlik (what I know about Turkey could fit in a small matchbox).
Anyway the airport has just one civil runway, the bigger parallel is a military runway that isn’t charted, and is officially the taxiway for the smaller runway.
There was also a story that one of my ex-bosses was sent from JFK to Lisbon for a month to get TAP ready for service at JFK. Brilliant mission that it was, was topped off by the brand new B707(an old story) returning my ex-boss to JFK on TAPs inaugural flight, him blissfully unaware in the cockpit, and alighting smoothly on the outer taxiway, pilots remarking that JFK’s runways didn’t seem to be all that wider than the ordinary.
It may be a myth, but if it was hard to imagine my ex-boss in a blissful state, it was easy to imagine him being unaware as the aircraft descended on JFK’s apparent multitude of runways.
I was thinking something about runway markings in daytime and blue lights vs white lights at night, but, nah, I won’t say it.
My Uncle once managed to mistake Pt. Mugu for Camarillo airport. Upon arrival, the folks were accommodating enough. Gave him a free bag of gas, made him sign an “I promise it was a mistake, and promise not to do it again” statement, and off he went.
I don’t think this crew’s going to be so lucky.
Taxiways have been used for landings but with specific markings, notams, ATIS instructions and so forth. It feels weird when it’s legal. I can’t imagine what it feels like when it’s not.
These guys damaged the reputation of the aviation industry (and NWA especially). I doubt they will ever be behind a yoke again. I hope not.
“These guys damaged the reputation of the aviation industry”
At least it’s not possible for them to “Sully” the rep of another particular Pilot. He is beyond reproach in my book.
I wonder what he would have to say on this incident?
I don’t recall if I ever used Taxiway Bravo at Whidbey for takeoff/landing, but flying club aircraft were authorized by course rules and tower clearance to conduct ops that way since it freed up the runways for the military aircraft.
Sometime lights don’t help.
Some of my coworkers chartered a private flight from Lincoln Ca (N of Sacramento) to the bay area for a convention for the day. They stayed late and flew back that evening.
Lincoln airport is a small town airport and does not have a tower, The runway lights come on when the pilot keys up on a particular frequency. This pilot had never flown in to Lincoln at night before. He did’t know that the frequency had recently changed.
He continued North trying to bring up the runway lights, then the lights finally came on and he landed – at Beale Air Force Base, home of the (operational at the time) SR-71 Blackbird, among other things. My coworkers had a “We arn’t in Kansas anymore.” experience when the MPs showed up with the M16s and had the pilot face down on the tarmac until the OOD sorted things out. It didn’t help that one of my coworkers had left his wallet behind and all he had for ID was a chewing gum sized plastic badge with his name on it (no photo).
Now we drive to conventions.
IIRC, a certain well known author, landed his Intruder at Fallon Muni, which is a few miles away,one dark night instead of NAS Fallon while working up for a Enterprise deployment. Of course, it brought chuckles at the time but the Muni is about one half NAS Fallon’s length and it was lucky we didn’t have a major accident. All’s well that ends well.
OT, just got back in town, catching up on stuff and saw this vid. Exceptional performance by the young ladies.
http://bit.ly/zlZ2Y
Apologies, H/T to Bookworm Room via Chaos Manner.
Jerry Pournelle’s website is normally worth a read.
I agree QM -hard not to find an informative, interesting or thought-provoking (yea or nay) article on his site. Wish he were doing better.
From his Friday post: “Wage controls continue. The war on the Chamber of Commerce continues. It’s all pretty reminiscent of other times and places where it all turned out badly.
And today’s Wall Street Journal has an op-ed by former Senator Bob Dole on Bosnia. Dole thinks we need to assert more leadership since Bosnia appears to be nearing collapse under the tender mercies of the European Union. Dole was the only man Clinton could beat in 1996, but it was his turn to run and he insisted on his droits d’ signeur. He has learned nothing and forgotten nothing, and I fear he is far too typical of the Country Club Republicans, who have never learned that the United States should avoid entangling alliances and not be concerned with territorial disputes in Europe. Bosnia is a European problem. Leave it to the Europeans. The Bosnia mess was never our mess, and Clinton’s intervention didn’t help the US in any discernible way. One of the fruits of US intervention in Bosnia was rapidly deteriorating relations with the then-nascent post USSR Russia, to no US advantage anyone can name.
The United States seems to work best when governed by a center-right coalition; it would work even better if there were two center-right coalitions contending for power. Alas I see few signs of any political party representing those views. I don’t expect to see the kind of government I want, which involves local control over most domestic issues and far less Federal intervention in local and state affairs; but it would be useful to see contending parties who simply want to govern, not transform the country into something it never was and never should be. Even if we could afford it I do not think it would be a good thing for the US to become Sweden (and as I watch Sweden under diversity, one wonders if Sweden can stay Sweden, but that’s another story). The Democratic Party doesn’t want to govern, it wants to remake us; while the Country Club Republicans seem clueless when they aren’t facilitating the ravenous wolves that go about seeking whom they will devour; nor do they have any notion of American national interests.
For a very long time we have sown the wind. Now we reap. And up pops Bob Dole reminding us of a place we have not sown recently. Halloween indeed.”
Damn, Ron, not your grandfather’s half-time show, that’s for sure. What I want to know is what fertile mind devised those routines? Not sure which is the greater accomplishment–the carrying out of the physical routine, or the conceptual thought that envisioned the routines in the first place.
Virgil, when I first started the video, my thought was, o.k., another good show performed by a spirited local team (jump rope this time). Wow -the routines, execution, enthusiasm and fun the girls were having was just so impressive.
Agree that their half-time show as a bit more than one might have expected.
Had read that their coach was Nationally recognized for her accomplishments. Suspect that her team will remember what they accomplished, and were a part of, for the rest of their lives.
That is a part of America that I love.
Great Squeaking Wombats! That WAS impressive!
I see SCOTTtheBadger has emerged from his den in the Wisc. dells to enter yet another uniquely, utterly original, highly memorable exclamatory phrase into the lexicon–or did he steal, er, appropriate, er, borrow it from somebody?
Whatever, I’M stealing it and every-time I use it in polite (or impolite as the case may be) company I am going to claim it came from my very own highly inventive superior mind. I have no shame. 
At Dulles Airport the taxiway for Runway 30 used to have a portion of it marked as runway 30R I believe. Something like 4000′ or so of the 8 or 9000′ taxiway. The idea was this was for General Aviation use IIRC.
This was back in the day when the number of daily flights at Dulles was something you could count in less time than it took to ride the people mover directly to the plane. I recall a flight instructor saying he used to take students there to shoot touch and goes and the tower guys appreciated the attention.
These days it ranks right up there as one of the busy ones.
[...] Hornet driver Neptunus Lex notes two unfortunate (and in one case, unfathomable) occurrences from the world of commercial [...]
I would feel better if Nose checked in, alive and still employed. Being the NWA A320 guy that he is…
Scott – thanks for the thought. I’m alive, well, and still employed.
Can’t comment – I am (very very very very peripherally) involved in the handling of both of these.
Hey, awesome weather here today, how’s yours?
KPAE 242326Z 2500/2524 00000KT P6SM SCT040
How’s by the rest of you?
Overcast here on my now six hour layover at NRT, thankavurrymuch. Sky Club, free iMacs, free chow, awesome Asahi beer machine, my team smashing Mizzou. Life is good — next fourteen hours home? Not so much.
Heh. Scott, after reading your comment I cannot (well, o.k., should not) complain about my domestic delays.
Would like to see Japan though. Spent some time on Oki, but that doesn’t really count.
http://www.ntsb.gov/Pressrel/2009/091022.html
In another clime and place: Sometimes when things go wrong, and you do all possible the right way, the end result still has a cost: ‘Hero Pilot’ Killed In Carribean.
A sad tragedy.
No such thing as a ‘happy’ tragedy. Sorry…
Yeah, saw that, but knew what you meant and given the event, was not going to make any trivial comment about grammar.
V/R
Hey, mid 70s here today and I shot a 84 despite a double on the last hole. All the fall colors were out today. Can life get any better?
Not much -sounds like a grand day.
Heck of a fini flight for both of them.
Sleepin. Mo’debbinly, they was sleepin!
I just read that they were on their personal laptops — they wuz gaming! WOW or some such, what’cha bet? No wonder they couldn’t hear the comms and cellphones.
Duh — deserve to be fired, if so!
How psyched do you think the two Delta guys that landed on the taxi way instead of the runway in Atlanta are?
This overflying MSP by their NW brethren seems to have taken all the media and blog comment heat off of them. Personally, I think their error was more egregious. But what do I know. I have to sit in the back anyways.