"Oops! Captain, I think we missed Minneapolis". Or words to that effect were probably voiced on the flight deck of Northwest Flight 188.
What happened? The crew says they were distracted by too much talking. Others think they fell asleep. Maybe they were talking in their sleep. Only the crew knows for sure.
There is much speculation about how airline flying in general and that flight’s cockpit activities in particular may have contributed to this occurrence.
One observation is that with modern, automated flight decks there is not enough activity to keep the crew alert. From Cnn.com:
When cruising over great distances, "it's very easy to be distracted because there's not a whole lot going on," said Emilio Corsetti III, a 30-year commercial pilot with American Airlines who has written numerous magazine articles about aviation. An airliner's entire flight can be programmed; once that program is activated, "the plane will fly to its destination without any input from the pilot at all," he said.
Patrick Smith, aviation writer, at Salon.com disagrees:
Even the most routine and "automated" flight remains subject to countless contingencies and a tremendous amount of input from the crew. Yes, tremendous.
Personally, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I have flown 20 Series Lear Jets at 45,000 feet for hours without a functioning autopilot (ahhh . . .those wonderful freight dog days. The wonder was that we survived.). THAT required “a tremendous amount of input”. It was exhausting! I have also flown fully automated aircraft from the U.S. to England. That involved flying for hours with NO input to the flight control systems and little contact with ATC. It was boring!
So yes, it’s true, the airplane will fly itself to the destination with no input but in actuality this rarely happens. There are unanticipated routing changes, altitude changes, and temporary headings required by ATC. There is also occasional record keeping to be accomplished. All these things help to keep the crew alert but I would not characterize this as a “tremendous amount of input”.
It’s easy to blame the automation for the boredom but at least the crew has some control over whether or not they will be bored. But anything done to relieve the boredom is by definition a distraction. Conversation is one of the best means of keeping all crewmembers alert. It keeps the mind active but breaks in the conversation allow for more situational awareness than reading or sleeping. As long as you keep the radio volume up.
Without the automation the crew can become more tired than with it and this they have very little control over. Once you’re tired, you’re tired. (Fighting to stay awake while preparing for a circling approach in a snowstorm at 2AM is not fun).
So did they fall asleep or were they in a “heated discussion”? Both explanations are plausible and both have holes.
Pilots do fall asleep, sometimes unintentionally. But this is rare. If it is believed they fell asleep one must believe that two pilots fell asleep, at the same time, for a full hour, at a time when they wouldn’t normally be sleeping. Not knowing anything about their duty day prior to the incident if one assumes their “body clocks” were on San Diego time that means that to them it was about 6 PM when they overflew Minneapolis and 5 PM when they allegedly fell asleep. Even if they had begun their duty day in Minneapolis that morning it is still not what I would call an extremely long tiring day. I am currently in a position where I am on duty 10-12 hours a day, five or six days a week. By Friday evening my week’s flying time amounts to about 40 hours. (We’re on a government contract, i.e. we are a “public use” operation, therefore no rules including flight/duty limitations). We manage to stay awake but it requires distractions.
On the other hand if you believe they just lost track of time you must believe that it was a very long discussion. This is possible. Long discussions I have seen. If they both had laptops open taking notes or looking up information this further occupied their minds and possibly blocked the flight displays depriving them of important information. Turning down the radio volume to facilitate these discussions also occurs. Missing handoffs due to being on the fringe of radio reception I have seen. It can take a while to realize that you are hearing only one side of the radio chatter. If you are distracted by conversation that one-sided reception in the background may give you a false sense that you are still in communication with ATC when in fact you are not.
I think they lacked the professionalism required to discriminate between enough distraction to avoid boredom (resulting in sleep) and too much distraction resulting in loss of situational awareness. In any case they were shirking their duties.
“. . . at the length truth will out.” [Launcelot, The Merchant of Venice, 1600]
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