AVIATION/ NEW INFORMATION OUT ON NWA FL188

New information came to light yesterday, after the NTSB opened the public docket on the NORTHWEST AIRLINES Flight 188 incident on October 21, 2009. Over 400 pages of documents were made public, which helps piece together events on the A320, which was on Domestic Service from San Diego to Minneapolis, when it overflew the MSP Airport by 100 miles. Reports say that 15 minutes after Flight 188 was supposed to land in MSP, Flight Attendant Barbara Logan glanced at her watch and decided to call the cockpit. The buzzer from her call was apparently what jolted the 2 experienced Pilots back to reality after they spent much of the flight griping about the new Pilot scheduling system, which they felt was shortchanging them because of Northwest's acquisition by DELTA AIRLINES. But by then, the Airbus A320 had already been out of radio contact for 77 minutes, flying over MSP at 37000 feet before contact was re-established well into Wisconsin. "Are we going to get there anytime before midnight?" she joked, according to the documents released. The Pilot who answered, she said, sounded "a little surprised" before replying that they would arrive by midnight GMT. She replied that she didn't know what that was, and he joked that she was in trouble for not knowing. But the Pilots were the ones in trouble. They then realized they were over Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and would have to turn around to get to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The release of the raw reports does not include a conclusion about the cause of the incident; that part is still pending. But what stands out is how easily and the Pilots lost track of time and their jobs: monitoring flight systems and staying in contact with ATC.

Also made public for the first time: an expression of remorse. "You don't know how sorry I am," Captain Timothy Cheney told investigators. First Officer Richard Cole said he learned at the start of the trip that he did not get the vacation time he wanted. Cole told Cheney that he was frustrated and was going to have to take what they gave him. About an hour into the flight, the report said, they began to discuss the new merged scheduling system. Cheney, who had been a senior Pilot with NWA, was "fairly upset" that he did not get the schedule for November that he wanted and that the new system gave him different trips that meant he had to come to work a day earlier, losing time with his family. Cole, who knew the system, then offered to help Cheney learn it and they both had their laptops out in violation of company policy. "They were still hearing radio calls and communications but never recognized they were being called," the report said. Cole said there was no excuse for failing to monitor the aircraft, saying that they had tunnel vision and were "focused." Cheney said the conversation on how to bid was never supposed to go as long as it did. "This was only supposed to take 10 minutes," he told investigators, saying that he was "blown away" with how long the conversation lasted. He said he was embarrassed and "let another force come from the outside and distract me." Cole said they both had their computers open until they got the call from the flight attendant, asking when they were going to land. The FAA has revoked the licenses of the Pilots saying they acted "carelessly and recklessly." The pilots have appealed. Delta Air Lines, which operates Northwest as a subsidiary, has suspended the Pilots. The Pilots also said they never slept during the flight, which had been initially speculated. When Logan called the cockpit about 8:15pm to ask about the arrival time, Cheney looked at the flight display unit and saw there was no flight plan, according to the documents. He turned to a different display, which showed Duluth to his left and Eau Claire, "at the 2 o'clock" position with no ETA information shown for their destination, the documents said. "We just flew over the Minneapolis airport," Cheney told Cole. He told Cole to contact ATC because "we need to get this thing on the ground." Cole said he "immediately" contacted ATC. But they had been tuned into the Winnipeg ATC, which gave them a frequency to establish contact with the MSP. The plane landed safely shortly after 9:00pm.