I was in Minneapolis the last few days and the talk of the town there all seemed to be about this Delta Airlines flight last week from San Diego to Minneapolis, where the pilots missed their destination, veered into Wisconsin, and then belatedly circled back to Minneapolis. The uproar over the pilot’s irresponsibility sparked an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and the New York Times’ Michelle Maynard and Matthew Wald report the initial findings:
The pilots told the National Transportation Safety Board that they missed their destination because they had taken out their personal laptops in the cockpit, a violation of airline policy, so the first officer, Richard I. Cole, could tutor the captain, Timothy B. Cheney, in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines, which acquired Northwest last fall.
The interim report from the safety board ran counter to theories in aviation circles last week that the two pilots might have fallen asleep or were arguing in the cockpit.
Each pilot, in separate interviews with the safety board that totaled more than five hours, denied those theories.
That’s certainly strange behavior and will likely result in the firing of both pilots. It’s probably unfair to write that this incident says something bigger about transportation or airline safety. The NTSB is conducting a serious review. Perhaps its a slight indictment of homeland security, but as the Times points out “more than a dozen air-traffic controllers in three locations serving Denver and Minneapolis tried to get the pilots’ attention.”