Good reason to use GPS on board commercial airplane

They are going to let YOU tell them "But my GPS says..."

LOL,LOL, back to your seat!

recalculating...recalculating...recalculating.......

Clearly, they fell asleep and the rest of the crew didn't notice how late they were . . .

Now, you'd expect that the Autonav would have nice, loud alarms that sound when you get to your destination . . . . so I guess they just engaged the autopilot (which simply holds speed, altitude and heading) and didn't bother programming the GPS.

As Don Adams would say in "Get Smart"...missed it by this much.

Maybe they should.

I was talking to someone with a pilot in the family and he thinks they have piloted their last commercial flight. The union might not even be able to save them.

If they were arguing as originally claimed, NW should fire them immediately. If they were fatigued and asleep, they never should have taken the aircraft, so the FAA will pull their tickets. Either way, they're done.

And they should be.

One of the pilots said they were arguing/debating and the other said they weren't but neither appears to offer any rational explanation for their actions or lack thereof. Maybe they should have scrambled the jets, scared the crap out of them and then charged them what it cost to send up 4 interceptors.
Would have been an expensive wake up call.

Wow. I would be more than a little concerned if I was on that flight.

I agree with everyone else, the pilots won't be walking away from this very easily.

Career = Finished!

They had a frequency change as they left Denver Center and entered Minneapolis Center. They missed that change and was out of contact with Center controllers. Sorry, but that just isn't done unless your sleeping. I'm surprised that the military which had planes standing by, didn't launch one plane to do a fly-by and investigate the problem.

These guys are going to be fired... No matter what they say it's unexplainable to miss the target destination...

We are allowed though to have GPS... connect a bluetooth gps to the laptop and voila GPS

Agreed, these guys will probably never fly commercial again, but has anyone thought of current FAA rules that allow pilots to work so many hours w/o rest, which may have contributed to the situation?

No one has heard of the real reason? Alien Abduction!!! That is the only answer that makes sense. I mean, one person asleep, but both? So they was arguing, and they wasn't nothing special. So who to believe? Aliens!!!! or time travelers? Oh well, they should be history for this boo boo!!!!

maybe the auto pilot got stuck (or some other serious malfunction occurred) and the FAA is hiding it.

Well, the established reason was that they were both on their laptops despite explicit rules of the airline that laptops are a no-no. They're history.

The comments about the stews calling them with on-board telephone system should have not been needed if they were paying attention to their primary role.

If I were on that flight, I'd be pissed.

Fred

NWA has given $500 vouchers to every passenger on that flight. FAA will pull the pilots licenses today.

I am flying to Minneapolis Saturday, Hope they stop there as I have another flight to catch! Of course a $500 certificate would be nice for future flights. LOL

I hope they were wearing their hats!

Well they don't need to worry about crew scheduling ever again...

Stupid way to lose your ticket.

They make the passengers turn off their laptops when taking off because they are afraid it might interfere with navigation. The guys only 12 inches away from all the navigation gear are using their laptops.

Totally proves the airline's claim that "personal electronics can interfere with navigation". Just not in the way that they thought...

I don't want to sound like a conspicuous but you really think they were on their laptops, not paying any attention to the radio or the on-board phone calls from the flight attendants? They were sleeping, but the Feds don't want a public panic about flying. Has anyone heard the tapes from the blank box? Yes, the Airbus 320 only records the last 30 minutes of flight but after they made contact, they were on the ground in 45 minutes. Now don't you think that comments were made in that last 30 minutes on how they (the pilots) would try to explain what happened so they both had the same story. I hope someone can prove me wrong and point me to a site where I can hear the last 30 minutes.

If the Federal investigators determined they were sleeping, it would be very near impossible to cover up. There are multiple people involved & that's the kind of thing that would bring the house down.

I accept the published explanation.

Fred

They were probably busy upgrading their Vista laptop to Windows 7. They're stuck somewhere in the upgrade process trying to figure out how to get it done successfully

Now that's an explanation I can go with!!!

Fred

Or else they were updating their Garmin unit with the latest nüMaps Lifetime update and it took way longer than they expected so when they were supposed to land they had no GPS guidance to use.

I agree with Bilson

Any pilot that has any time on the flight deck knows you hear your call sign, no matter what... If you are awake.

Claiming they were "discussing" the new crew scheduling software is their second story... Initially they said they were in a heated discussion over company policy...

They were asleep.

I think it is a conspiricy and they were actually commissioned by the government to spy on Wisconsin.

testing Canada's defense system...

too many stories,
heated discussion/conversation,
use laptop...

Too funny! Now if this silly GPS will just complete its maps loading....

They couldn't have been upgrading - if they were installing windows there would have been a crash.

Before the controller strike I doubt if anyone would have noticed as they often stacked planes into holding patterns and let them wait for a landing slot. Now that computers can compute the departure to arrival time of all aircraft in real time no more delays at the arrival location, except for unforeseen weather.

Maybe the airline will keep them on as luggage handlers or ticket counter staff?