Overshot?

10/28/09

Two professional airline pilots overshot the destination airport and claimed they were distracted by their unauthorized use of a laptop computer.

Unfortunately, the truth about the 150-mile deviation – while air traffic controllers and company handlers were frantically trying to reach them by radio and text message – may never be known because the best evidence, the cockpit voice recorder (a component of the so-called “black box”), only saves 30 minutes of sound. It took more than 30 minutes to turn the airplane around, fly the approach, land, and taxi to the gate, so the sounds in the cockpit that might verify or contradict the pilots’ story have been permanently erased.

Were the pilots so engrossed in conversation that they failed to hear the aircraft’s call sign repeatedly and urgently being transmitted? Or were they literally asleep at the wheel with the airplane on autopilot? It is not uncommon for a radio call to get “stepped on” or garbled, but the length of time that passed with no response to repeated messages suggests that these pilots were more than merely “distracted.”

The full story – and whatever lessons might be gleaned to improve airline safety – would have been told if the FAA had required more than a 30-minute loop on the cockpit voice recorder. The FAA needs to consider requiring a digital log of all cockpit sounds. The pilots won’t like it, but safety demands it. – Mark Pierce

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