oops my bad

Missed their radio calls due to a heated discussion about airline policy?! I'm not buying it.

It happens,

No one can justify the fact but it occurs quite often. Especially with automated cockpits. Humans are poor monitors. We are designed to be actively involved in the process....not just sitting, listening and watching. Yeah...I know that is often the modern airline pilot's fate and their responsibility so...... no excuses.

Contrast that with a flight I made this week end in a Twin Bonanza from Long Island N.Y. to Charlotte N.C. Flying an empty airplane....single pilot, without an autopilot, in heavy IFR weather, rain, turbulence, using VOR nav., flying Victor airways with navigation changes every 30/40 miles and communication with ATC every 10 or 15 minutes. No way a guy is going to drop out of the loop in that situation.

But contrast that with long haul, automated flight and well..... been there done that!

Often pilots miss their radio calls, during long cruise flight..... fly beyond the frequency range and "assume" that all is quiet and well. Sooner or later ATC calls the airline dispatch office....the airline dispatcher sends the pilots a message on AIRINC and gives them the next ATC frequency. The usual ATC response upon contact is ...."welcome back guys, we been looking for you." It is rare however to fly beyond ones destination....especially with automated navigation, which should end at destination. Of course the computer will just keep you flying your heading straight ahead if you go past the destination point. Probably what happened here. And yes....with mergers, pay cuts, loss of retirement benefits,instability and seniority integrations, such as that which is occuring at NWA/DAL....one can get so caught up as to forget about the job.

Many decades ago my captain and I were discussing his hobby of clock collecting. We flew from St. Louis to within 100 miles of Minneapolis without talking to ATC enroute. Suddenly we realized that we had flown beyond our last ATC frequency range. I called MSP approach....got back in sync and all was well.

Once again....no excuses. These guys are in trouble and deserve to be so. Just acknowledging that "shit happens."

Bob

PA12_Pilot wrote:Missed their radio calls due to a heated discussion about airline policy?! I'm not buying it.

I'm with you, Rob! All we need is the Cockpit Recorder on that flight to tell us what really happened.

They have just released the cockpit tapes for this flight........




wait.












Captian... "ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz

First officer... zzzzzZZZZZzzzzzz snore...zzzzz

Captain... zzzzzzzzzZZzzzzzzzz

First officer.. zzZZZZzzzzzzzz

Captian.. zzzZZzzz Ugh..... OH SHIT.. !!!!!!!!!!!

Good one, STOL!!

You think the airline would release them tapes?

Even if these pilots were in a heated discusion about whatever (politics, sex, wife, exwife, girl they banged the night before, etc), you would think that at least one of them would see out the corner of there eyes that they are f ing up!!

I looked last night on FlightAware.com (http://flightaware.com/live/flight/NWA188/history)for this flight 188 from San Diego to Minn. MN. and found that the flight can run up to 3.36 hrs long. So I can see where the flights attendents or a regular passenger wouldn't think anything of what happened up in the cockpit. But usually if there's much a delay, the pilot will come on and say so. For now on, if I'm on a flight and it's starting to run a few minutes late and the pilots aren't saying any thing and you don't hear/feel the decsent, none of the buzzers are giving the flight attendants there warnings, I'm going to say something to the flight attendant .

Assuming they were in the mid 30's ( I didn't look it up), they would have to start down about 100-120 nm before their destination. They flew 150 miles past destination, so that's 250 nm beyond top of descent. At about 8 miles a minute, that is 20 minutes past where the jet would have started down. If the box was programmed correctly, fifi (the Airbus) would have been yelling at them the entire time. But unlike a Boeing, Fifi will not start down without some pilot input. (That is, until she runs out of Jet A). This should be an interesting story if the truth ever comes out!!!!

IMO
Do do happens. Anyone who says they never f up are not being honest. No one was hurt. Slap there hands, end of story. That is, if it is, the 1st offense.

These guys are in trouble, the press will have a hayday with it (remember Go Jets recently in Hawaii that over flew their destination), and while missed radio calls do happen frequently, flying past your destination is a harder feat to accomplish (I haven't heard the type of aircraft, but take it from other posts they were in a Bus). A reminder to the rest of us that you DO have to look around your (fill in the blank) and make sure that you're still on the green line headed to your destination.

In related news, here is another interesting story. Delta flight lands on the parallel taxiway in ATL. Been based there before and know what a cluster that place can be. The FAA spokesman said she couldn't remember this happening in the recent past. Apparently the Feds have short term memory loss. An ASA flight did it in 2004 or so...and then took the highspeed exit back onto the runway!

http://www.ajc.com/news/delta-flight-lands-on-167519.html

Grassstrippilot wrote:In related news, here is another interesting story. Delta flight lands on the parallel taxiway in ATL. Been based there before and know what a cluster that place can be. The FAA spokesman said she couldn't remember this happening in the recent past. Apparently the Feds have short term memory loss. An ASA flight did it in 2004 or so...and then took the highspeed exit back onto the runway!http://www.ajc.com/news/delta-flight-lands-on-167519.html

Now that is creative flying. Almost as good as the lady aerobatic pilot at OSH a couple years back, driving down the runway, and when the cops get her she says I thought I was on the taxiway. I think she must of been upside down to much that day.

Of course I have never done anything wrong

RobBurson wrote:

Grassstrippilot wrote:In related news, here is another interesting story. Delta flight lands on the parallel taxiway in ATL. Been based there before and know what a cluster that place can be. The FAA spokesman said she couldn't remember this happening in the recent past. Apparently the Feds have short term memory loss. An ASA flight did it in 2004 or so...and then took the highspeed exit back onto the runway!http://www.ajc.com/news/delta-flight-lands-on-167519.html

Now that is creative flying. Almost as good as the lady aerobatic pilot at OSH a couple years back, driving down the runway, and when the cops get her she says I thought I was on the taxiway. I think she must of been upside down to much that day.

Of course I have never done anything wrong

Have you seen the taxiway layout at Atlanta?? Holy Crap . Look at it on Google Earth and this layout http://204.108.4.16/d-tpp/0910/00026AD.PDF. Can you imagine being park at the FBO and told to taxi down to 28 for departure??

But....there is a BIG differance between RWY 27R and taxiway M when your on short final (I would think).

Yeah, but...they're pros!!!

If you're going to not land on the runway, why not go for the grass???

1SeventyZ wrote:Yeah, but...they're pros!!!

And that's why most of us GA types try to stay away from airports like ATL, LAX, etc.

1SeventyZ wrote:If you're going to not land on the runway, why not go for the grass???

It looks like this one went for the grass http://www.airliners.net/photo/JAT---Yugoslav/Boeing-707-340C/1517358/L/&sid=4d27a9174d1e066501321c33f96bc980

Not too long ago, I believe when some construction was done on taxiway M in BOS, a bunch of yellow paint was used to mark TAXIWAY on it near the approach ends. It's big and bold and hard to miss. Or they could just put one of these on them. or this .

Crap!, Now I have more things to have bad dreams about at night!

Cockpit buffoonery, I may have committed a bit of it...
I just got back from a Pacific trip, and we were about a hundred miles off the coast of Vietnam, talking to Ho Chi Minh center(the Aircraft Commander refused to let me call them Saigon on the radio). I look down, and see so many lights I could have sworn we were over land. After nearly crapping myself and thinking about how I was going to explain this to whoever intercepts us and forces us to land, I spun up some Navaids to check to GPS. Sure enough, we were actually a hundred miles off the coast. Apparently, half the population of that country ahs a boat and sits that far off shore with all the lights on.
I have also heard of KC-10 guys building a holding pattern into the computer over the destination, so if they all fall asleep, they just enter holding and wait on a controller to wake them up. Pretty sure this is a rumor, but you never know...

So the latest is that the crew was busy on their laptop computers. I think they had those new laptops. You know, the ones that fold out.

Skystrider wrote:So the latest is that the crew was busy on their laptop computers. I think they had those new laptops. You know, the ones that fold out.

They were either 1) Posting on BCP, or 2) Playing World of Warcraft on the new Airtel in-flight wireless.