NWA 188 - Sleep or Laptops?

Don't worry, Franken is on it. Everyone will be safe! We'll just check our laptops do the flight leader before entering the cockpit.

You missed the good old days when she was just called the "A Line"

It's gone from:

A-Line > Onboard Leader > Flight Leader > (and soon) Aircraft Commandant (:sarcasm:)

Head Stoo is more than sufficient.
 
Bah! Nice and pleasant may not be my default, but you're right. :)

The idea of the poll rankled me because it is outright speculation about the cause of a specific incident that is being actively investigated.

.

no, its not speculation of the CAUSE of an incident. We know the cause. The pilots were NOT paying attention to their duties. Period! They admit it...not speculating. I am curious as is the rest of the country if the actual reason of their loss of situational awareness was computer's (I heard they were actually surfing jetcareers.com), arguing, sleeping, playing patty cake who knows...really doesn't matter!

I "think" they fell asleep...just my thought... I also wonder if they would have just admitted it, and said please feel sorry for us, we are over worked, long hours, very fatigued, I wonder if the spot light would be on the problem of pilot fatigue and OFF them. It is already a hot topic right now. I wonder if they would have just received a spanking and 30 day susp,or ???

Does anyone know what the out come of the go/mesa pilots in Hawaii was?
 
Both pilots fired from Mesa, CA was a notorious dbag anyway. Both had their pilot certificates suspended, one for longer than the other. I think 45 days and 90 days, for the FO and CA respectively.

CA also lost his medical when he was diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea.
 
Both pilots fired from Mesa, CA was a notorious dbag anyway. Both had their pilot certificates suspended, one for longer than the other. I think 45 days and 90 days, for the FO and CA respectively.

CA also lost his medical when he was diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea.

still minus the loss of medical (another issue all together) they had their certs back in 90 days! NOT a revocation!
will prob never fly for an airline again, but they can fly...

these guys will have to retest hmmm lazy eights in an arrow again...woohoo...not!

funny thing during my CFI initial I actually had the FAA examiner fly a lazy eight (long story) the guy blew three in a row. wanted to laugh so bad, but knew if i did, I would not become a cfi that day!
 
sirously I dont understand why people get "rankled" over a topic on an internet message board...seriously it's not going to change the outcome of an NTSB investigation. Besides talking about incidents/accidents at least brings to light serious (and sometimes not so serious) topics.

Just over a couple years ago I had two friends die in a plane crash. We STILL don't know why. The plane is still in a warehouse in dallas and the NTSB is NOT going to even crack open the engine case to see what may have happened. All we know is a Master CFI and a PPL holder who was getting some proficiency training stalled and spun in from 150 agl some 4500' after take off (1300' beyond the departure end of the runway) , Retired US Airforce pilot, master cfi, stalls and spins from only 150agl when the airport is sourrounded by hundreds of acres of bean fields...all we have is speculation, and you can bet we talk about it all the time. It keeps fresh in our minds that a text book accident (stall, spin) can happen to the best.
I miss them both, but if we can gain even a little knowledge from accident and use it to be safer...speculate away!

I'm not trying to make a villian out of the NW pilots. I feel sorry for them. By the Grace of God go I...I hope NONE of us ever have to go through this, I hope we all learn something from this!
 
Is anyone else looking at this from the perspective that we shouldn't worry about what happened, but rather what caused it?

Our American society always likes to point and place blame immediately instead of digging deeper to find out what caused it.

If they were sleeping, ok, bad. Yeah. But why were they sleeping? Maybe we need to take a look at that so it doesn't happen again.

Looks like history repeats itself again, all the experts and people who DONT fly make the rules and judgements, instead of it being regular line pilots.

Sim instructors, Fleet managers, Chief Pilots, or anyone that doesn't fly the line on a regular basis should not be allowed to give their opinion in front of congress about our issues. I don't care if you once flew the line. Our memories quickly go away. The only ones who can help this industry are the ones who do it day in and day out.
 
Is anyone else looking at this from the perspective that we shouldn't worry about what happened, but rather what caused it?
Not sure how you figure our the cause of something that happened until you know what it is that happened.

Our American society always likes to point and place blame immediately instead of digging deeper to find out what caused it.
Not always. It seems that just as often our society likes to find cures and enact regulations before knowing what the problem is - the old "cure in search of a disease." If they were playing with their laptops, I'm not sure how attacking sleep issues would help. OTOH, if they fell asleep, I'm not sure how a knee-jerk no-laptops-in-the-cockpit rule would help.

Your point is well taken but until the investigation is done we don't know what the cause is of whatever it is that actually happened.

Besides it's much more fun to speculate!! :beer:
 
"Hey Butthead, this sucks, change it!" "No way Beavis, I wanna know!" "Blblblblbahahahahaa .... I AM THE GREAT CORNHOLIO!!!"

You got it backwards, but thats cool. Probably the first refernece to them that I have seen on these forums. :laff:

"settle down butt-munch. Im trying to take a nap"
 
Well I'm sure they pulled the CVR which would make it fairly obvious if it was laptop use vs sleep. Regardless, it yet again highlights how easy it is to lose your job in this industry... I'm sure these guys had successfully completed thousands upon thousands of flights safely only to lose their job over 70 minutes of distraction.

(Not excusing them for what happened) Point being, be careful out there.
 
older style cvr only 30 min of tape. luckily for the crew I think their u-turn took them more than 30 min. from what news reports say...of course we know how reliable that is.


oops cencal beat me by 2 min
 
I'm no expert but I have a hard time believe airline CVRs are 30min loops these days. And as an aside I also have a hard time believing that airlines wouldn't randomly sample data from their own company property.

The Safety Board is interviewing the flight attendants and other company personnel today. Air traffic control communications have been obtained and are being analyzed. Preliminary data from the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) revealed the following:

* The CVR recording was 1/2 hour in length.
* The cockpit area microphone channel was not working during this recording. However, the crew's headset microphones recorded their conversations.
* The CVR recording began during final approach, and continued while the aircraft was at the gate.
* During the hours immediately following the incident flight, routine aircraft maintenance provided power to the CVR for a few minutes on several occasions, likely recording over several minutes of the flight.

And, the airlines are NOT allowed to sample data, it's part of the FOQA/ASAP agreement. If they did, we wouldn't be providing safety data to them...
 
Why is there such a big taboo on speculation... Personally, imagining the 'whys' help me think through problems, even if they're not the cause of a particular incident.
 
Well for me its the fact that this poll has just 2 options. One or the other, when there are a LOT of things we could be debating were going on in this incident. It seems to early to say "Its A or B".
 
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