Am I missing something regarding Northwest Airlines?

[HuskyFreeNorthwest]

How is this a major national story? I heard an air traffic controller on the radio yesterday who said this kind of thing happens all the time, that when you are going 8-10 miles a minute and miss one radio call it isn't hard to go 100 miles.

About 5 years ago I flew from Portland to SLC, when we flew over the SLC airport I thought it was strange. When we flew over Provo I wondered if I had gotten on the wrong flight. When we turned around over Nephi and headed back to SLC I was happy.

I don't get it. These poor pilots have to be hoping that something serious happens in the next day or two.

[LiveCoug]

My dad is a retired pilot for United. This doesn't happen that often. They were out of radio contact for a while, that's the issue.

[statman]

My dad is a retired pilot for United. This doesn't happen that often. They were out of radio contact for a while, that's the issue.

I talked with a friend who's a pilot for American. From the news accounts, the NW guys missed one radio call to switch frequencies - and didn't acknowledge the request. He said that's not all that uncommon - but normally, when the call to switch channels isn't acknowledged, it's given again - which doesn't seem to have happened.

If it happened as one controller was passing the plane off to another either with a shift change or from one air-traffic control area to another, with the wrong frequency noted for how to talk to them, it's not that outrageous of a situation. The pilots would've had to have been distracted for only about 15 minutes to fly that far off course, but they're used to contact from ground controllers getting them ready for approach and landing.

It may be a case of pilots circling the wagons to protect one of their own, but he puts a lot of the blame on the ground controller that didn't follow proper procedure in getting them to switch their radio frequency.

[Fiyero]

Letterman had a pretty good top ten last night.

Top Ten Northwest Airlines Pilot Excuses
10."Bunch of fat guys seated on right side of plane made us vector east"
9."We get paid by the hour"
8."MapQuest always takes you the long way, am I right, people?"
7."Tired of that show-off Sullenberger getting all the attention"
6."You try steering one of those airplanes after eight or nine cocktails"
5."Wanted to catch end of in-flight movie"
4."Activating autopilot and making occasional P.A. announcements is exhausting"
3."According to our map, we only missed target by half-an-inch"
2."For a change, decided to send luggage to the right city and lose the passengers"
1."Thought we saw Balloon Boy"