By Joan Lowy

Associated Press 

WASHINGTON -- The Northwest Airlines pilots who overshot Minneapolis by 150 miles are appealing their license revocations with the National Transportation Safety Board.

The appeals were filed late Wednesday, said board spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz. He said that appeals typically are heard by an administrative law judge with the board within 120 days.

The Federal Aviation Administration revoked the licenses of Capt. Timothy Cheney of Gig Harbor, Wash., and First Officer Richard Cole of Salem, Ore., last week. The agency said the pilots put the 144 passengers of Northwest Flight 188 in serious danger on Oct. 21 when they failed to communicate with anyone on the ground for 91 minutes despite repeated attempts by air traffic controllers and their own airline to reach them.

Cheney and Cole told investigators they lost track of time and place while working on crew scheduling on their laptops. They said they didn't realize their situation until a flight attendant contacted them on the intercom to ask when the plane would be landing. By then, the Airbus A320 was over Wisconsin at 37,000 feet. The pilots turned the plane around and landed safely in Minneapolis.

Attorneys for the pilots declined to comment.

The incident raised national security concerns. Senior White House officials were notified by the White House situation room during the incident. Fighter jets in two locations were moments away from taking off to track down the errant airliner when contact was re-established.

FAA and NTSB investigators were in Colorado Wednesday, where they interviewed controllers at FAA's en route center in Longmont. FAA investigators also spoke with military officials at the North American Aerospace Defense Command, spokeswoman Laura Brown said.

The U.S. military would have launched fighters if it had been notified sooner. Gen. Gene Renuart, who heads U.S. Northern Command, has said he learned of the incident just four or five minutes before FAA regained contact with the pilots. The delay has raised questions about whether controllers complied with procedures put in place after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Two bills were introduced in the Senate Thursday to ban nonessential electronics, including personal laptops, from the cockpit.

"We simply want to ensure that, with all of the electronic distractions available these days, flying the plane remains the one and only focus," Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., the author of one of the bills, said in a statement.

FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said Wednesday that the Northwest incident is the result of an erosion of professionalism among commercial airline pilots.

"I think that this is a sign of a much bigger problem," Babbitt said in a speech to an aviation club. "I can't regulate professionalism. With everything we know about human factors, there are still those who just ignore the commonsense rules of safety."

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ElGuapo
GoingGalt, MN

Posted on 11/5/2009 at 6:05:05 PM

Shocking.

That said, the general public has no idea what goes on in order to get a commercial pilots license. Or a professional career.

“FIRE THEM!”, the masses say.

And fire the doctors who have spent 12-18 years post secondary education to advance the field of knowledge, once they have made one (!) mistake.

That’s the ticket. Fire everyone. A career path full of purists.

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irishman
Rochester, Mn

Posted on 11/5/2009 at 6:18:28 PM

ElGuapo: 1st point, it’s a matter of degrees. A doctor screws up and someone may lose a limb or worst case a patient dies. A pilot screws up and potential 100’S meet their maker. All a matter of volume.

2nd point. Distracted by their lap tops? Do you actually believe that one? If they were distracted so easily I don’t want them up front and if this is a cover up then they should not be flying either.

Either way, now they ride coach.

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JGreg
Rochester, MN

Posted on 11/5/2009 at 6:38:07 PM

There is still something major that is being unsaid by the pilots.  The key is the 91 minutes (one and one-half hours) without responding to attempts at radio contact.  Having flown this route many times, the pilots knew that there would be radio contacts needing to be made at a number of points along the way.  Every time they moved from the coverage area of one controller into another, for example.  Even if the radio had been accidently nudged off the correct frequency, the pilots should have been aware of when radio contacts were due to be made.  Until the pilots come clean about what really was going on in those 90 minutes they do not deserve any breaks.  They’ve chosen to withhold the truth and they must be accountable for their own actions.

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