Lost Northwest Pilots Were Trying Out New Software 518
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that two Northwest Airlines pilots who flew about 110 miles past their destination to the skies over Wisconsin as more than a dozen air-traffic controllers in three locations tried to get the plane's attention had taken out their personal laptops in the cockpit, a violation of airline policy, so the first officer could tutor the captain in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines, which acquired Northwest last fall. 'Both said they lost track of time,' said an interim report from the National Transportation Safety Board countering theories in aviation circles that the two pilots might have fallen asleep or were arguing in the cockpit. 'Using laptops or engaging in activity unrelated to the pilots' command of the aircraft during flight,' said a statement from Delta Airlines, 'is strictly against the airline's flight deck policies and violations of that policy will result in termination.' Industry executives and analysts said the pilots' behavior was a striking lapse for such veteran airmen who have a total of 31,000 flying hours of experience between them. In the case of Flight 188, 'Neither pilot was aware of the airplane's position until a flight attendant called about five minutes before they were scheduled to land and asked what was their estimated time of arrival,' the interim report said."
Luck not shot down (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess neither one of them... (Score:5, Insightful)
will need to know how to use the new scheduling system now!
Not sure how I feel about this (Score:2, Insightful)
Since most planes, to my knowledge, have auto pilot, and I'm assuming it was set, isn't there something with autopilot that would have also alerted the pilots to their location and time. I understand that pilots would have had time to discuss this stuff, but I almost believe that losing track of time is a big offense. What would have happened had they had fuel issues and now they were running out of fuel?
If I was on that flight I would likely be pissed off knowing that these two who hold the responsibility to get me to my destination weren't really doing their job properly. While this ended in a non-incident there should still be some sort of repercussion for those actions. These men chose to let themselves become distracted.
I am surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
I am surprised that anyone is able to keep their job. Where an honest mistake where no one was harmed causes someone to loose their career. I would feel more comfortable riding in a plain from a pilot who has a relatively good record and made a mistake and got severely corrected As they know the severity of their mistake, and are extra careful not to make an other one. Vs. a Pilot who has a good records but has gone too comfortable with their job, and will be likely to make their first mistake.
It reminds me when I first started working. I was cleaning out my old backup files. so I meant to do a rm -f *~ but me being green and not so careful I did an rm -f * ~
I Hit Ctrl-C after I realized it was taking way to long. However, I cleared out about 2 weeks of work. Plus my personal documents. Needless to say I learned to backup more freaklently and the value of a good source control system.
But If I were to get fired after that mistake and forced to switch careers then I wouldn't be able to apply my new learned methods.
That is why I cringe whenever there is a big mistake and people go well I hope that guy gets fired. Because the guy who did the mistake and especially if he was honest about it, would probably be so much more careful the nest time around. Who I would be more worried about is the guy who fired him. As part of the mistake is on him too. For not making sure they are safe guard in place.
pushed? not a big deal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Shouldn't they have picked up air traffic control yelling at them regardless?
Would have to assume they took off the headphones so they could hear each other as they discussed the computer app. I don't think there's a speaker in the cockpit from the tower.
Two questions come to mind:
1) what sort of urgency was placed on learning this new system? Were they being rushed? Did anyone suggest they hurry up and get each other up to speed on the app ("as soon as possible"/"whenever you get a chance"?) and they simply didn't have any personal time left to do it? (things like this tend to get pushed to be done on personal, rather than paid, time)
2) 110 miles in a jet? really? big detour? How long does it take a jet to travel 110 miles? This extended the flight what, a whole 15 minutes counting backtrack time? For a jet that's like a bus driver missing an exit and having to drive another 4 miles to the next cloverleaf and do a 180. Though it probably had a few more exaggerated side-effects, like passengers missing connecting flights (which happens too much anyway even when planes are on time) plus the cost of a few hundred pounds of fuel. But still, seems like its being overblown.
Some perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference between that and the mistake of a pilot is a potential several hundred lives.
Re:It's a tough job (Score:4, Insightful)
This all seems to be true, in general, of most industries these days.
Folks are generally expected to work longer than 40 hours, but not actually compensated for it. Your workload will virtually necessitate coming into the office early, or working through lunch, or staying late... They'll roll out new procedures or tools or toys, but there's no time allotted for training - you're expected to learn it before or after actual work hours. And the pay for those 40 hours that you are compensated for, is going down. Maybe not literally... Maybe you didn't actually take a pay cut (though plenty of people are)... But your wages aren't keeping up with bills/inflation/whatever.
This isn't only true in the airline industry. I'm seeing it in my own little corner of the IT world - not just my own job and work hours, but those of my co-workers as well.
Re:I am surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
I see what you're saying, however, you deleting your files may hurt your employers bottom line and potentially yours _at worst_, pilots losing awareness can mean hundreds of deaths.
Now I'm not saying they should be fired, but I can easily see why they would be. Airlines and pilots are held to very strict standards by the government.
Could additional "training" and a heavy penalty/fine resolve the issue and create two better pilots? Possibly and potentially even likely. But if the punishment for potentially putting hundreds of lives in risk is a slap on the wrist, do you really think all the thousands of other pilots are really going to take notice? I have a feeling being fired in this case shows all the other pilots to simply only consider being distracted if you want to lose your job. In short, it appears any "big" mistake ends in termination simply to make examples of you.
They were working, after all (Score:5, Insightful)
so the first officer could tutor the captain in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines
If this is really the case (which is still to be confirmed), then they were at least working for their company, making the best use of what they (incorrectly) thought was "available" time.
Keep this in mind, all of you reading slashdot at work !
Re:This is a non-event. (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean like unknown to the pilot emergencies that might be communicated to him by a traffic controller, such as change your altitude, you are on a collision course with x-other plane?
A pilot ignoring traffic controllers for over an hour is NOT a non-event.
Re:I wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
A stewardess ran out of patience.
Re:Radio Reception? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I am surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
I certainly agree that nobody should be fired for a genuine, simple mistake, and with the idea that people will learn from their mistakes and become better at their jobs as a result.
Nor do I particularly like to see people lose their jobs and therefore a lot of their chances of getting another, leading to what could be a very bad impact on their livelihood (and possibly the family's).
But there's a difference between a genuine mistake and neglect. Hearing things on the radio but ignoring it, falls firmly into the neglect category IMO. And that's where they unfortunately but quite rightly shouldn't be trusted to fly again. Mistakes are a learning experience, but neglect is a personality problem.
Re:Luck not shot down (Score:3, Insightful)
Strangely enough there was a crappier clone movie of Executive Decision called Strategic Command (Executive Command was the working title).
Re:Just Say No to publci transport (Score:2, Insightful)
Slight flaw in your reasoning: what about all the other people on the road, a fair proportion of whom are bloody idiots who aren't even competent to operate a skateboard?
Re:pushed? not a big deal? (Score:1, Insightful)
You have to begin your descent loooooong before the 110 miles. They were still at cruising altitude when they noticed they were past their mark.
Just say no to poorly judging risk (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, then, that the method of travel which you insist is the safest actually results in the most deaths per mile traveled... I am not saying anything about you *personally* but this kind of poor risk judgment is what leads to all kinds of bad decisions. From what type of travel to choose, to what kind of medical treatment to choose, we humans are absolutely TERRIBLE at properly weighing risk. Say what you will about the fallibility of statistics, we all stand to gain if people put a little more stock in sound science as opposed to emotion-driven decision making.
Re:Bad. Real Bad. (Score:3, Insightful)
Anon has a point. While the OP's problem wasn't so much that they got caught as that they stopped paying attention to their duties to do it (which is, admittedly, what caused them to get caught), the fact remains that *regardless* of how of an aircrew "prioritizes" it, it is strictly against procedures to be doing this, and a termination offense.
Re:Complete overreaction (Score:3, Insightful)
> Do you know what happens to a captain (or any pilot, for that matter) when
> they are terminated? They start at the bottom of any airline that hires
> them.
Perhaps as baggage handlers. I'd be very surprised if any airline would
willingly engage in the potential public relations disaster by hiring a pilot
"who already previously has put several hundred lives at risk".
Isn't it truly frightening (Score:5, Insightful)
that on this site we have so many people who believe Michael Moore?
Re:pushed? not a big deal? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Just say no to poorly judging risk (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you for demonstrating my point. Even though these people (mass transportation operators) have a far greater responsibility placed on them, they still manage to kill fewer people than self-driven motorists. I am not saying we shouldn't be very vigilant about safety in ALL forms of transportation. But, to say that just because you are taking responsibility for yourself (by driving yourself) or just because you are (slightly) more likely to be the only one killed in the event of an accident, is just another gross misjudgment of risk.
Re:Autopilot... (Score:3, Insightful)
In my eyes, this is a good time to start discussing taking the human factor out of flying?
Sure, and just have planes crash when the computer can't handle a situation - eg flight 1549.
Fully automated flying is a _BAD IDEA_ for passenger jets. Yes an autopilot helps with the tedium of long distance level flight. However you need the pilots there for the emergency scenario. And AFAIK, pilots still take off and land manually.
The French have tried to build sophisticated computer software to automate as much as the flying as possible in their Airbus planes, and these systems work well most of the time. However when they fail, they usually fail catastrophically. Would you like to die just because the computer encountered a problem it wasn't smart enough to work through? I always want a guy up there who's able to hit the "OFF" switch, and take over. Even if it doesn't work, at least it's an extra back up system and was worth a shot.
Re:pushed? not a big deal? (Score:2, Insightful)
9. Firing them is a bit excessive, but some sort of disciplinary action should be taken.
The article says they ignored air traffic control for 90 minutes. I am not a pilot, but it seems that would fall under the category of egregious disregard for their responsibilities.
What are the possible safety consequences of ignoring ATC and other radio communication for that long? Does the ATC pass any safety related information to the cockpit crew?
Perhaps they should not be fired, but I would certainly not expect them to fly a commercial passenger flight again.
Re:It's a tough job and it pays accordingly (Score:5, Insightful)
HAH! "for a job that technology has made almost fully automated... the larger the plane, the more they earn - even though it takes little more skill to pilot a jumbo jet."
$200K for the decades of training and experience to know what to do when one of the world's more complicated machines breaks, a mile in the air, with 200 souls on board. "Overpaid"? What a jackass.
Re:pushed? not a big deal? (Score:4, Insightful)
That is also true, but let me explain something about aviation,
The system in place today relies on pilots/atc controllers reporting everything that happens that could cause an incident or accident (look up the definitions on google). A lot of the procedures in place today exist because there is the perception that you can report errors/distractions/whatever and that report will be used in order to improve the system so that that particular distraction/error/whatever will not occur again, and not that the report will be used to penalize you.
If you start penalizing and firing people for erring (and believe me, pilots do err, but a most of the times the redundancies of the systems in place prevent that error from becoming an incident/accident, and by redundancies I also mean the other pilot, not just automatic systems) then those reports will not occur and you will loose a very valuable way of knowing what happens in a flight.
These voluntary reports are what make aviation so safe these days...
B
Re:pushed? not a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:pushed? not a big deal? (Score:2, Insightful)
The HF buzzer you refer to is presumably Selcal, which assumes they were tuned to company frequency on one radio. I thought the A320 generated a MCDU message to check flight plan when the aircraft deviated from its route, though IIRC the message and attention getting light are purely visual, and under the circumstances gentle visual reminders weren't going to do much.
They didn't do their job, instead preferring to do what flight crew do 90% of their time - discuss rotas and pay and try and work out if they could squeeze another allowance. Firing them isn't excessive at all. You mentioned TCAS - how quickly do you think these two could have reacted to a TCAS RA, when they have already ignored radio traffic, the MCDU warning prompt and had no positional awareness at all.
In a broader context, perhaps this is a sign of a deeper malaise. Airbus aircraft (with Boeing not far behind) are increasingly automated, with the flight crew purely monitoring for much of their time. Monitoring is boring, and maybe that's the real reason this happened.
Re:Bad. Real Bad. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that's not what the OP meant by "prioritize." Quoting the original post:
So the OP admits he's done this himself, but it's okay because he "prioritized" it correctly.
Re:pushed? not a big deal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod parent up, please.
this is a great point to drive home: that the pilots had lost SA and positive control of the aircraft. had an emergency situation presented itself they would have been behind the aircraft, and that is not a good place to be. SA (situational awareness) is one of the key factors in aviation that differentiates the "that was a close one" moments and the "NTSB re-assembles my aircraft" moments.....
Re:pushed? not a big deal? (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe we can agree there are at least two classes of errors: (1) mistakes committed due to cognitive overload or poor user interface, or judgment calls that turn out to be bad, and (2) errant but intentional decisions that cause needless danger.
An error of Category #1 is a result of being human, and as you point out it is highly valuable to report and learn from them.
Errors of Category #2 are also a result of being human, but require people to consciously decide to commit them, and to take actions that are contrary to professional behavior.
I believe what we have here is the second type. These pilots brought their laptops with them into the cockpit and then made the conscious decision to open them up, and made the conscious decision to ignore audio signals from ATC and other pilots. This is not just a case of "oops, I didn't know, I didn't hear, I didn't see". These guys engaged their brains and intentionally chose to disregard their professional training and obligations. There should be consequences for this sort of thing.
Re:As jellomizer put it... (Score:1, Insightful)
I've been fired twice. The first time was for putting up an "about me" web page on a company-owned machine. It was a pretty relaxed IT department and the web was the cool new thing to experiment with, and my boss knew about it. But HER boss was surprised by it and didn't approve of the "misuse of company resources". That night I was shown the door. The second time was for having an argument with my boss. I'd been working 14-hour days for two weeks and lost my temper when he told me to redo something I'd done a week before. Again, I was escorted out the next day without even a discussion. Both were mistakes, to be sure. Both were mistakes I learned from. But instead of letting both the business and the employee benefit from my continued employment, they canned me. It's as if the pink slip is the only HR tool they know how to use.
Re:As jellomizer put it... (Score:5, Insightful)
>Kind of sucks when you are designing a $20000 dollar circuit board in your first month and you put the
>PGA socket lands in backwards.
Shouldn't they have fired whoever was signing off on your work?
I can't imagine a company letting a newbie design a 200000 USD board and then not having a more experienced engineer sign off on it. For all the things wrong that were wrong at my past job, what you describe sure as hell wasn't one of them.
Re:Luck not shot down (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks. Good to hear from someone that might have counted, if it had come to that. Glad to know you folks are on the job.
Equally glad you could stay on the ground for this one, of course. :)
Re:pushed? not a big deal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's see how you see this after 10 Years of commercial flying. My Brother is captain on an A320 for many years now. The problem is boredom. Most of those pilots are over-achiever until they have the job they want. And from then on, they have too much time while doing their jobs. Most of them start doing their office work in the cockpit, play games, watch movies, etc.
I don't want to say that the "computer thing" wasn't a silly excuse for something else, but think about it, most of them are so bored by their job that they start doing stupid things after some years (especially when they also have a lot of routine on the routes they fly every day).
Cheers,
-S
Re:Luck not shot down (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Luck not shot down (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I've been deployed a good part of the year so I don't know about every time this has happened, but I was here for this:
http://www.nationalterroralert.com/updates/2009/04/06/f-16s-scrambled-stolen-canadian-plane-lands-in-missouri/ [nationalterroralert.com]
We also intercepted a russian bomber near alaska last winter. We were tasked with air security over mpls during the last RNC and that resulted in some scrambles.
Most of the alert standbies and practice scrambles go unnoticed around here. The only reason this event made the news was that it involved a commercial airliner, which means that it ranked right up there with runaway brides and missing children as far as the media are concerned.
And while I don't think we've ever intercepted anything near L.A., we've stood alert in iraq, D.C., florida, panama, curacao, hawaii, and alaska (just in recent memory). It's entirely possible that we could get sent to stand in temporarily for another base's alert; it happens pretty often.
-b
(oh and this is all public knowledge; whenever I talk about my job some AC starts in with how the black helicopters are going to come get me...)
Re:As jellomizer put it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Shouldn't they have fired whoever was signing off on your work?
Who do you think fired him?
Re:Radio Reception? (Score:3, Insightful)
An honest mistake?! Seriously? Completely disregarding flight procedures (on various levels) for personal "training" is blatant misconduct and at the absolute minimum they should be fired. There's a reason there are two pilots in a cockpit and they violated several standing rules of commercial flight. I'll be surprised if they can ever fly commercial planes again.
So you're OK throwing away 25 years of unblemished flight records for their very first mistake on the job. I hope your boss is a bit less strict given that I'm sure you've not been 100% correct your entire career.
You don't think that a 1-year suspension without pay would be sufficient?!? Or are you just a hard-ass that believes in one strike and you're out?
Re:HEY MODS!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
He was modded down because hes exploiting the threading system for Karma whoring. If he was working on a PGA socket and a pair of F-16s flew around him while he was making his mistake, perhaps his reply would make more sense.