[Editor's note: the following was added after the Northwest pilot and co-pilot met with investigators to answer questions about the reason for the overshoot.]
The story starts to unfold. Well, sort of. The pilot and co-pilot told federal safety investigators that the reason they overshot Minneapolis by 150 miles was that they were working on their laptops, albeit in violation of company policy. Both said that they "lost track of time."
Wait a minute, though. How could two professional pilots lose track of time for a half hour or more? This is especially puzzling when you consider that each pilot has a headset connected to communication radios specifically so that they can communicate with air traffic control (ATC). We know now that ATC was not able to raise the pilots by radio, and that military jets were about to be scrambled to intercept the jetliner to investigate further.
This means that one or more of the following occurred:
(a) both pilots had their headsets unplugged
(b) both pilots had the volume turned down on their radios
(c) both pilots chose to ignore ATC
The big question then is: why? What were they doing during this lengthy period of time? It defies logic that they could have been fooling around with a laptop and not heard repeated ATC calls. It certainly is possible to miss a call or two, and this is fairly common on the ATC airwaves. But to miss a half hour's worth of calls means that something is terribly awry.
Bottom line: the laptop story doesn't really hold water. These two were either sleeping or engaged in some other (ahem) activity which so consumed them that they did not hear ATC. Thank God the autopilot was engaged!
