Pilots Were Distracted by Laptops, Discussion in Cockpit

Monday, October 26, 2009

This article on Fox News is revealing of the deleterious effects of communication technology and the misuse of that technology inappropriately, by so called professionals in public servant employment positions. This article is about a pilot and a co-pilot that failed to heed procedure and protocol and were oblivious to the fact they had missed their bus stop and totally disregarded communications with ground crews. The article reports "The Northwest Pilots who overshot a Minnesota runway by 150 miles last week told investigators they were using their personal laptops in the cockpit, a violation of company policy, according to a National Transportation Safety Board advisory."

I’ve heard of auto pilot, but this sounded ridiculously like ‘no pilot’ and should be an embarrassment to the pilots and also to the company for having hired such incompetent individuals. This was not an accident or an oversight or whatever you want to call the action of the pilots. This was willful negligence on their parts to not do their job while on the time clock. The article reports “The two pilots, interviewed separately on Sunday, told investigators they lost track of time when they used their laptops while in a “concentrated period of discussion” about the new monthly crew flight scheduling system.” OOPs, I’d say they forgot they were flying a plane altogether and thought there were sitting in the coffee shop at the airport. Only thing the pilots were not guilty of was lying because they “told NTSB officials that they had not been monitoring the airplane or calls from Air Traffic Control at that time, according to the report.”


The story get better, because when the pilots did not respond to ground communications for over an hour even though they heard “conversation on the radio”, “fighters from two North American Aerospace Defense Command sites were put on alert for the plane”. Too bad they didn’t just send them an email since they were on their laptops. Can you imagine what the bill is going to be to Northwest airlines from NORAD? Guess who finally saved the flight? It was the flight attendants who noticed they had passed the airport and called the pilots. I guess flight attendants really are in charge of passenger safety.


I know this seems comical in ways that no one was flying the plane and thankfully all 144 passengers landed safely, but it could just as well have been a report of another crash with tragic consequences. Public transportation is becoming very risky to take and it is not always due to equipment malfunction, but more human error caused by distraction away from job performance. We see it with cell phone calls and texting ect. in other reports of car crashes, train wrecks, ship wrecks. I’m even seeing it in the medical field and wonder how much time is taken away from patient care when staff are surfing the internet at work or glued to their every cell phone call and texting up a storm. Technology is great, but the responsibility of job performance does not seem to be increasing with the responsibility of using it appropriately, but seems to be taking this generation of professionals on a downhill slide. Personally I hope these two pilots lose not only their jobs but also their pilot’s license. They should never be allowed to put the public in that kind of danger again. Based solely on the facts reported in this article I say hopefully undisputedly no second chances for these pilots.