Just how did a Northwest Airlines flight 188 overfly its Minneapolis destination by 150 miles on Oct. 22? It wasn’t fatigue, as first speculated; it was “distracted flying” according to reports from federal investigators, who just completed their interviews with the first officer and captain earlier this week.
The two were both using their personal laptops mid-flight—in violation of cockpit policy—and going over the procedure for monthly flight crew scheduling together. Apparently they were so engrossed that they didn’t respond to several radio messages from air traffic controllers and their airline for over an hour. They only came to realize their mistake after being alerted by a flight attendant on board, according to the investigator’s report.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota called the incident “the ultimate case of distracted driving, only this time it was distracted flying.” Indeed, the situation comes less than a month after DOT Secretary Ray LaHood held a national distracted driving summit to bring heightened awareness to the growing problem among drivers of all ages who use cell phones and text while driving. School bus drivers are being especially targeted along with newly-licensed teen drivers with laws to curb the use of cell phones, including texting, while behind the wheel. The feds say that one to two seconds of taking one’s eyes off the road to fiddle with a cell phone or even to get lost in conversation can result in the vehicle traveling down a highway approximately 100 yards. In the case of the Northwest pilots, regardless of what they were actually doing, the distance traveled was obviously far longer.
