MINNEAPOLIS — The pilots of a Northwest Airlines flight that overshot the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport by at least 100 miles were listening to the wrong frequency for part of the flight and discussed company policy for about 15 minutes while looking at laptops, according to a National Transportation Safety Board report released Wednesday.
The report shed details on what happened during the Oct. 21 flight from San Diego to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and includes interviews with the pilots and the flight attendants.
The report says the pilots were listening to the Winnipeg frequency, instead of the one for Minneapolis. It also said they did not hear the numerous requests to contact them.
Also, a flight attendant told investigators that the lead pilot answered on the third ring and sounded surprised when she inquired about the flight’s arrival time. “It was as though he had to think about it,” the report said, based on information from flight attendant Barbara Logan.
The Federal Aviation Administration has revoked the licenses of Capt. Timothy Cheney, 53, of Gig Harbor, Wash., and First Officer Richard Cole, 54, of Salem, Ore., saying they acted “carelessly and recklessly.” The pilots have appealed. Delta Air Lines, which operates Northwest as a subsidiary, has suspended the pilots.
The pilots said they never slept during the flight as had been initially speculated.
Logan, according to the material released Wednesday, said she was expecting an 8:01 p.m. Twin Cities time arrival and called the cockpit about 15 minutes later to ask, “Are we going to get there anytime before midnight?”
The response from the captain was that they would arrive by midnight Greenwich time.
She said the captain sounded a “little surprised” by her call and added that the crew typically doesn’t use Greenwich time for such communications.
The pilots said Logan’s inquiry was their first indication that something was wrong. The pilots checked their controls and realized they had overflown Minneapolis.
Cole said he “immediately” contacted air-traffic control. It was then they realized they had been dialed in to the wrong frequency and switched to the correct one.
