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Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/23/2009 10:41:43 AM

ThatDamnedPanda

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Well, this is awfully reassuring. A Northwest Airlines jet flying from San Diego to the Twin Cities completely overshot Minnesota and were 1/3 of the way across Wisconsin before they figured it out and turned around. Air traffic controllers all the way from Denver to Minneapolis tried repeatedly to contact them and ask them what the hell they thought they were doing, but the plane was off the air for an hour and 18 minutes. Air National Guard jets at two airbases were put on alert, and the plane was boarded by police to make sure that it hadn't been hijacked.

The reason, according to the pilots? They were having an important discussion about work issues, and got a little distracted. Yeah, right. The FAA has taken custody of the cockpit voice recorders, and will be listening with interest to see if they contain shop talk or snoring noises.

quote:

The National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday said the pilots in charge of Northwest Flight 188 blamed a "heated discussion over airline policy" for causing them to lose "situational awareness." It appears awareness strayed sometime after 6:56 p.m. Wednesday, when the NTSB says air traffic controllers lost radio contact with the plane as it carried 144 passengers and five crew members at 37,000 feet. A ground control center in Denver handed over theflight to the Twin Cities at 7:45 p.m., according to a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman. The plane overflew Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport at 7:58 p.m. A controller re-established contact with the plane at 8:14 p.m. The cockpit crewmembers said they had become distracted and requested to return to the airport, the NTSB said. A passenger on the flight, Lonnie Heidtke of Chippewa Falls, Wis., said the pilot announced about 8:30 p.m. that "we've been put into a holding pattern." The flight was supposed to arrive at 8 p.m. Heidtke, who was traveling on business and working on his computer, wasn't paying much attention to time. "We were flying in circles somewhere," he said.

Wait A Minute - Wasn't That Our Exit?

This comes 2 days after another Delta-Northwest flight, from Brazil, landed on an active taxiway in Atlanta. May be a few bugs that still need to be worked out in this merger/

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/23/2009 9:35:12 PM

ThatDamnedPanda

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Well, shit. I thought it was interesting, anyway!

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/23/2009 9:55:53 PM

outlier

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Panda,

I think the problem is your fist comment said it all.
"Well, this is awfully reassuring."

No one wanted to follow that. It was just too good.

Outlier

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/23/2009 10:03:00 PM

rulemylife

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I think this from your link likely sums up what happened, although the facts are yet to come out:

In general, Joseph said he believes crew rest requirements are grossly insufficient. While airlines typically allow a break of 10 hours between flights, that might equate to five hours of actual sleep after taking time for the commutes between the airport and a hotel, and meals, he said.

"You put three or four of those days back to back, and by that last day, you've got some tired crew members."

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/23/2009 11:52:58 PM

TheHeretic

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My own experience, after driving all night, many nights in an 18-wheeler, is that falling asleep at the wheel is a scary thing, but waking up there is a fucking terrifying.

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/24/2009 6:07:40 AM

pahunkboy

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that stuff is pretty much all automated. controlled by a computer and preprogramed. The tower controls the plane for the most part. I dated a pilot in the 80s. He said they occasionally fly the plane so they don't forget how.

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/24/2009 6:19:08 AM

soul2share

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um.....can you explain what you mean by the comment "the tower controls the plane for the most part"????? If that were true, why would they need pilots...the tower guys can land the plane.

The only thing air traffic controllers do is control the airspace....they have absolutely NO control over the actual plane itself. And only once the plane is in the sky can the automated pilot be utilized.

Personally, I think that letting one pilot out of two nap on board is a good thing. When I was in the Army working Customs in Germany, it was not unusual to see a crew land one plane, and be back in 8-10 hours to take another one out...and we're talking intenational flights, not hops from airport to airport here in the US.

And Lord only knows what was going on in that cockpit....for TWO or THREE people not to hear anything at all is unnerving. Apparently, the flight attendants were even calling them on the plane's intercom system. Anderson Cooper had a retired pilot on 360 last night that indicated that the buzzer for that line was so loud that pilots actually told the crews to knock on the door rather than use the phone.....to quote him....it would "scare" the flight crew.

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/24/2009 6:29:36 AM

pahunkboy

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What I mean is it pretty much is computer program operated.

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/24/2009 6:36:39 AM

soul2share

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But at no time are any planes controlled by computer from the tower. The program operates the plane from an onboard computer......not from the tower.

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*Not a fuck was given.*

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/24/2009 7:51:08 AM

pahunkboy

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Flights tho take a pre-determined route. One which is approved. I am not sure what the state of the art is... but it is pretty advanced.

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/24/2009 8:41:59 AM

rulemylife

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quote:

ORIGINAL: pahunkboy

Flights tho take a pre-determined route. One which is approved. I am not sure what the state of the art is... but it is pretty advanced.

Routing is based on a number of things, but ultimately it is the responsibility of the pilots.

And they are the ones who punch in the desired routing into the flight computers.

Remember this accident from several years ago?

On 20th December 1995, American Airlines flight 965, a Boeing 757, was flying from Miami, Florida to Cali, Colombia. Radar was unable to be used as a monitoring tool by Air Traffic Control (ATC) in Cali, because of attacks by Guerilla in 1992.

Radio navigation aids and the airports instrument approach system were used instead. ATC gave the pilots the option of taking the shorter route of approaching runway 19, instead of having to take the longer flight path of turning into runway 01. The pilots accepted this change in flight path, and upon this decision the pilots cleared the waypoints from their navigation computer.

Due to this error the pilots had to use their maps to identify the next waypoint and programme it into the navigation computer. The next waypoint was Rozo, which was identified as ‘R’ on their charts. The pilots programmed this into the naviagation computer, however, there were duplicates for ‘R’ in the stored waypoints of the navigation computer.

Romeo near Bogota was the larger city, therefore selected by the navigation computer. On autopilot this caused the aircraft to turn sharply and head towards Bogata and more importantly a mountain. The GPWS (Ground Proximity Warning System) was activated approximately twelve seconds before the crash, where the captain and first officer were unable to clear the mountain. This led to the aircraft crashing into the mountain near Buga, Columbia. There were 163 people (155 passengers, 8 crewmembers) onboard the aircraft, and only four passengers survived.

(AVIATION KNOWLEDGE: American Airlines Flight 965)

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/24/2009 8:52:01 AM

pahunkboy

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we are not too far off from sensors in roads to control cars. The concept has been in planning for a while now. I tend to doubt the computer of the airplane is exclusively controlled by only the airplane.

what is 150 miles in a flight? 15 minutes? Many of the pilots are flat out drunks. Who would really know Wisconsin from Minnesota?

It is hard to say in detail what went on. There is a push to reduce the salary of pilots. We can send a drone in to kill people- all pre programmed off board. So the science is more advanced then they let on.

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/24/2009 9:10:46 AM

Termyn8or

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Only very few planes are so equipped. It became an issuey (word invention again, sue me) thing after 9/11 of course.

Remote flying an aircraft presents the same problems as remote driving a car, just to a much greater degree. But it can and has been done. For one, as bad as my eyesight is, most cameras are still worse, and it is harder to get yourself "into the space" so to speak. I mean you can put twenty cameras in the car and twenty monitors on someone's desk, but they are still going to have a hell of a time just to paralell park.

Actually I inadvertently pulled a decent metaphor here, because taking off and landing can be considered "parking" in a way. It is by far the most difficult aspect of remote flying. There is a certain amount of "feel" involved. Regular autopilot is not the same thing. That just keeps the plane on it's heading and maintains altitude. Let's hope some big mountains don't come up, so to speak.

So in reality, even today a pilot is mainly need to takeoff and land. On a longer flight they can indeed just set it on auto until a course correction is needed or for takeoff and landing. They actually can catch a few Zs in between. But they are supposed to wake up and do their job when required. I guess these guys didn't.

We already know that the military sometimes uses drones for recom missions, but they are generally after a good bombing. Surface to air defenses should already be taken out so there are generally no surprises. However they are not trusted to do the actual bombing usually and forget about a dogfight.

There is no interface in the world efficient and accurate enough for an actual dogfight in the air, although they would love to have it. When maneuvering in a dogfight pilots experience tremendous G forces that can cause unconciousness. If they could effectively remote control a fighter jet under those circumstance it would be a tremendous advantage. We could just about have an army of video gamers. I don't think there would be any need for the draft to say the least.

Don't get me wrong, flight simulators are very sophisticated, and actually could display in such a way to give the operator alot of feedback, but effectively gathering the information to display is the problem. What's more just like remote driving can't see a guy with a white cane coming up to a crosswalk, there are certain things technology simply can't do as of yet for remote flying.

You can bet your ass they are working on those problems though. There is research on virtual reality going on all over the place, and that is a big part of the whole thing. Now there's something you can believe without proof.

However for proof of something like this, you don't need Alex Jones and snopes (seem to be like yin and yang eh ?), look into academia. Find the keywords and start Googling and on any given Saturday you could stumble across something pertinent that has not YET been classified. Unmanned planes are called drones, but that is not enough, you'll need more words in the search string unless you have a hell of alot of time on your hands.

Now back to the point in the OP, they were supposedly talking about work issues ? They who ? There was more than one person in the cockpit then ? So that would mean that all of them were either asleep or really not paying attention.

For all we know they could have been having some fun with a sexy stewardess.

T

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/24/2009 5:07:35 PM

servantforuse

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I know a lot of pilots, both commercial and private. Drinking before flying is something they don't do. I know that it happens rarely, but it is rarely. If that plane goes down because they had a couple of drinks, they go with it.

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/24/2009 6:40:47 PM

kiwisub12

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quote:

ORIGINAL: pahunkboy

Many of the pilots are flat out drunks.

Would you like to produce some statistics to back this assertion up?

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/24/2009 6:50:14 PM

servantforuse

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He won't be able to do so.

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/24/2009 7:56:04 PM

pahunkboy

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quote:

ORIGINAL: kiwisub12

quote:

ORIGINAL: pahunkboy

Many of the pilots are flat out drunks.

Would you like to produce some statistics to back this assertion up?

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0UBT/is_2005_May_30/ai_n13830930/

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/25/2009 5:55:44 AM

angelikaJ

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quote:

ORIGINAL: kiwisub12

quote:

ORIGINAL: pahunkboy

Many of the pilots are flat out drunks.

Would you like to produce some statistics to back this assertion up?

I do know that many many aircraft mechanic contractors are.

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/25/2009 7:38:40 AM

soul2share

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quote:

ORIGINAL: pahunkboy

quote:

ORIGINAL: kiwisub12

quote:

ORIGINAL: pahunkboy
Many of the pilots are flat out drunks.

Would you like to produce some statistics to back this assertion up?

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0UBT/is_2005_May_30/ai_n13830930/

Your article does not back up your statement. The incidents quoted occurred between 2002 and 2005, and it also states that number of pilots under the influence is declining. And I just noticed the date of the article itself is in 2005.

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*Not a fuck was given.*

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RE: Asleep At The Wheel - At 37,000 Feet - 10/25/2009 7:57:52 AM

pahunkboy

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quote:

ORIGINAL: soul2share

quote:

ORIGINAL: pahunkboy

quote:

ORIGINAL: kiwisub12

quote:

ORIGINAL: pahunkboy
Many of the pilots are flat out drunks.

Would you like to produce some statistics to back this assertion up?

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0UBT/is_2005_May_30/ai_n13830930/

Your article does not back up your statement. The incidents quoted occurred between 2002 and 2005, and it also states that number of pilots under the influence is declining. And I just noticed the date of the article itself is in 2005.

So they all now are recovered?     Wow. AA is fast.

Page 2 of the article lists the incidents.
Per haps the number of drunks are declining on the cattle cars.   That is all an air plane is- a cattle car.

Now back to the incident- being that they scrambled fighter jet to it- this is serious.   Costly.   And I am the one who has to take off my shoes and go thru a scanner at the broken down crack ho airport. TSA is now searching greyhound bus passengers.    So check points and turning of the onstar of the car is not far in the future.

Show me the people who are not messed up.   So many are drunks, druggies, liars, cheaters, players, gamblers, or just flat out goof offs.

There are no normal people anymore.

Everyone has baggage and skeletons.

Once again- I am a barrel of sunshine today. lol.

Cheers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9VFKy8dgNo

< Message edited by pahunkboy -- 10/25/2009 7:58:44 AM >

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