Laptop Shenanigans Left Pilots Distracted

Pilots from the Northwest flight that overshot its Minneapolis destination overshot by over 100 miles spoke to investigators and, according to the Wall Street Journal, told them "that a bathroom break, chatting with a flight attendant in the cockpit and then taking out their laptops to discuss work schedules created distractions that led to more than an hour of radio silence with air-traffic controllers." Apparently the laptop use violated Northwest policy, though the federal rules don't ban them. Well, at least Pansing, Gooch, or Bumpus was involved.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Ben Yakas in News on October 26, 2009 6:29 PM

Comments [rss]

NannyState

Usually they time their ejaculations with the approach to Minneapolis.

ProcedureTurn

REALITY CHECK:

THEY FELL ASLEEP. These stories they're concocting about arguments and laptops are fabricated lies. If you flew you'd know. The Airline knows, the FAA knows, those on the inside know that this does indeed happen.

Pilots routinely sleep duirng cruise, albeit one at a time. In fact, it's common practice to have the FA check-in on them every 30 minutes to ensure what happened doesnt happen. Unfortuantely, this unwritten system failed them. FA knocked and called to no avail.

If they confessed to this initially, they'd be in a lot less trouble.

rhonda718

It takes about a half hour to go 150 miles... but considering that they should have started their descent 150 miles BEFORE the airport, that's how they calculate the hour that they were not in radio communication with anyone on the ground.

MT

I have kind of a random question. I know they overshot the airport by 150 miles, but does anyone know how long it takes an airplane to go 150? I mean is it like 5 minutes or 30 minutes? I'm wondering just how distracted these pilots were and how long it took them to notice.

freddynyc

Rumor has it that the two pilots were surfing on the internet for ebony porn on their laptops and subsequently lost track of time....

brandonz

How about a line mentioning that Delta-NWA maintains a hub at JFK, just to pretend this is directly NYC-relevant?

Spirit of 76

Not everything on Gothamist needs to be relevant to NYC. If a story is big enough, it will be covered here. It never seems to fail that they get some whiner about how a story isn't connected to NY. Same thing happened with the balloon boy story. Here's a crazy idea. If you don't like a story, don't read it and don't comment on it.

Wza

Thank you!

hubcap

i guess the connection is that flight that landed in the hudson. if that guy had been on the porntube site who knows what may have happened

Judge Smails

"working on laptops" is the new "hiking the Appalachian Trail" !

ANGRYGOD11

Doing anything that prevents you from doing a job where lives are at stake should be illegal. We don't have to spell out every little thing if common sense clarifies this is endangerment.

Book them.

EastRiver

Translation: they were watching porn on their laptops.

speaktruth

East River, excellent translation and decoding on your part. I saw it written on his face when the media tried to come to his house and interview him. Clearly a case of an extended cockpit porn perusal session. And now if you will all kindly excuse me I have some new scheduling policies I need to familiarize myself with as well.