Were The Northwest Pilots Just Perplexed By The New Facebook?
Note: These are not real pilots. Or are they?
By now, we've all heard about the Northwest Plane That Flew Too Far. But we haven't quite heard the full story on what caused these two fools pilots to stop paying attention during the landing. Until today.
Initially, the pilots said they were distracted by a "heated discussion over airline policy and lost track of their location." But it turns out that the pilots were not even handling the right controls.
The FAA has recently suspended the pilots--First Officer Richard Cole and Captain Timothy Cheney--because they copped to being on their laptops during the crucial moment. They still maintain they were discussing new crew schedules. But yes, their laptops. Laptops in the cockpit. Pilots diddling about on their computers while they were supposed to be landing a plane. Why not pull out your Blackberry and start playing Brickbreaker, for crissakes?
Not surprisingly, there will probably be a crackdown of laptops use by pilots in the future. Peter Greenberg even surmised that this sort of tomfoolery in the cockpit could lead to a flat-out ban of electronics for pilots.
We may never know for sure what happened in the cockpit, but the fact that the pilots were distracted by laptops will likely garner the headlines. This use of personal electronics in the cockpit is a violation of the airline’s flight deck policies, yet surprisingly, there is no federal regulation against using devices like laptops as long as the plane is above 10,000 feet.
In fact, pilots have admitted that this is a fairly common practice during the mostly automated "cruise" phase of the flight—although not both pilots at once, as in this case.
Let's put it this way: if there are laws banning us from calling and texting while we're in our cars, then there should definitely be laws banning pilots from fooling around on their laptops while ferrying human lives in an airplane, whether in the cruise phase or not.
Related Stories:
· Hijacking Was Feared In The Case Of The Northwest Plane That Flew Too Far [Jaunted]
· Northwest Pilots’ Laptop Use Could Spark Personal Electronics Ban in Cockpits [Peter Greenberg]
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