Airbus A320 MISSED Airport by OVER 100 miles, WHY?! | Northwest Airlines Flight 188

this

airbus

a320

is cruising at 37,000 feet over the continental united states from the outside everything looks normal but no one has been able to contact the pilots of this plane about an hour and a half what's happening inside stay, many thanks to curiosity for sponsoring this video In order for you to understand the story behind Northwest Airlines Flight 188, you need to understand a little about the landscape in which

airlines

operated in the United States after 9/11. The 911 terrorist attacks along with some other factors combined to make it really difficult for these

airlines

to survive, this led to several chapter 11 bankruptcy protections for some of the airlines and that in turn led to many large mergers between these airlines between the years 2004 and 2008.

One of those mergers was between Delta Airlines and Northwest Airlines and that occurred in October 2008. After that merger, this new company became the largest airline in the world for a time. Every time an airline merges, there will be friction because these. Two company cultures come together and there will be things like seniority lists, for example, that need to be merged and this can make some pilots or cabin crew feel like they are being demoted in seniority because suddenly there are maybe hundreds of people. that are coming on top of them, but in addition to that, there are also changes to the standard operating procedures for how the planes are actually flown.

This was also true in the

northwest

delta meltdown and they had changes to, for example, how the pre-

flight

setup looked. So before the merger in the

northwest

the captain would be the person who always set the fmc and overhead panel on the aircraft and after the merger the pilot on board would configure the fmc and the first officer would then install the overhead panel. They are small changes, but when you are used to operating an airplane in a certain way for many years and suddenly you are told to operate the same airplane in a different way, it is always difficult for pilots and airlines. aware of this and made these changes in steps during the merging process.

Another thing that changed for the pilots when this merger happened was their preferential bidding system, the way they bid for their

flight

s that they were going to fly in the next few months because the way it works at most airlines is that the pilots will have a say in how their programming works; For example, depending on your superiors at the company where you work, what you did last month, flight time limitations, etc., it may impact the type of flights you want to get in the future. Now at my airline I don't have a system. bidding and that's because almost all of us live at the base we operate from and always come home every night, so this means that it doesn't really matter what destinations you have, but in the United States that's not very common.

Instead, many pilots are based in different parts of the United States and have to fly to their base and operate from there, and because it can have a big impact on their quality of life what kind of tender they can get in the event of the northwest delta merger the bidding system had changed substantially and the pilots had received 150 pages of instructions on how this new bidding system was going to work and almost everyone felt that it was very confusing and difficult to work with and this will have an impact substantial in what happens on this flight.

The pilots of Northwest Flight 188 were very experienced. The captain was a 53-year-old who resided in Minneapolis but actually lived with his wife in North Seattle, this meant he was trying to bid on flights that occurred late in the afternoon on his first day and ended early around noon on your last day so you could travel to Minneapolis before your first flight and then travel home after your last flight, thus minimizing the number of hotel nights you had to spend in Minneapolis in the days before starting your pattern five-day work period in which the incident flight occurred.

His second day had been spent at home with his wife, on his first day today, he started at 6:30 in the morning as a passive crew member flying in the jump seat from Seattle to Minneapolis and landed a few hours before the noon. Which was also before he was supposed to start his first service, he spent that time in the Northwest Airlines crew room talking to a couple of instructors who were available in the crew room about how to work with this new system. Bidding. The first officer was also very experienced. as a 54 year old man who lived in Salem, Oregon and had a configuration similar to the captain on his list, so he would also try to fly on his first day on the first day of the list together, he also departed at 6: 30 in the morning flew and landed around noon just before checking in for their flight to San Diego, just after noon on October 20, 2009, the two pilots met for the first time, they had never flown together before meeting each other.

In the crew room, together with the cabin crew, we reviewed the flight documentation for the flights from Minneapolis to San Diego and it seemed like a completely normal flight. They went out to the plane, boarded the passengers and made an uneventful flight to San Diego. In San Diego, the pilots had a scheduled 19-hour stop, but the cabin crew returned to Minneapolis again. The pilots were picked up by the hotel bus, they went to the hotel and the captain's wife was waiting for them at the hotel. They actually flew from Seattle so they could spend the night together, this meant the pilot split up, the captain and his wife went to dinner and the first officer went to dinner alone, but they both made it back to the hotel safely. before midnight and slept through the night, which meant they were completely rested the next day, October 21, which is the day of the incident flight, just before noon, the pilots left the hotel, went to the

airport

and began to make your preparations. preparation of the flight and in the brief preparation everything seemed normal, the only small problem was that an area of ​​clear air turbulence was forecast along its flight path, so the normal route had been slightly changed, but there was no nothing unusual about what they were scheduled to ascend to.

The cruise at 35,000 feet but they could go higher if they needed to. The return flight arrived a little late and the cabin crew who were going to fly alongside them back to Minneapolis were already on board that flight when the plane finally arrived. The pilots came on board and introduced themselves to the cabin crew. They had a brief briefing where they informed the senior cabin crew member about the possible turbulence on the flight. They also checked the technical condition of the aircraft, which was good. There was nothing wrong with the plane, the pilots decided that the captain was going to be the pilot who would fly for the flight and the first officer pilot monitored, meaning it was the first officer who was in charge of doing the paperwork and speaking With our traffic control, the captain established the flight management.

He computed the route we're going to fly and filled it up to the standard arrival route to Minneapolis, but he didn't put the runway into use because at the time they probably didn't know, they boarded 144 passengers. which was booked for the flight, so there were two pilots, three cabin crew and 144 passengers on board when they departed. At 1459 Pacific Standard Time, Northwest Flight 188 was pushed back from the

airport

gate in san diego and began their journey towards minneapolis, initially the climb approximately It was completely normal, they climbed to 35,000 feet, which they had initially planned, but shortly after reaching cruising altitude they realized that there was much more turbulence than they expected.

They were waiting, so they asked to board a 3-7 flight. -0 37,000 feet and this was approved by a traffic control, the crew executed the climb and approximately one hour and 23 minutes after takeoff they had settled on 37,000 feet, the flight time was expected to be around 3 hours and 12 minutes, so That would have been landing around 8 o'clock Central Standard Time, when the plane stabilized at 37,000 feet, the pilots decided to remove the headphones and instead turned up the speaker volume to be able to continue listening to air traffic control. This way they were a little more comfortable and if the first officer needed to talk to a traffic control he could use his handheld microphone to do so and this is something you can do on the Airbus A320 because it is reasonably quiet when you are on the Boeing.

The 737 I fly is loud at pretty much any altitude I fly at, so we tend to keep our headphones on throughout the flight, so this may have had an impact on what's about to happen and I'll tell you all about it. after this short message from my sponsor. Now I know that you are watching my videos because you love learning new things and discovering the essential details behind each story. If that's true, they should seriously look into it. The sponsor of this episode, Curiousstream Curiositystream, is a high-quality subscription streaming service with thousands of great non-fiction stories and documentaries from some of the world's best filmmakers.

I'm watching a series right now called "What Went Wrong With the Shuttle Challenger." disaster, which is terrible but also very, very interesting, if you think Peter, that sounds very interesting, then consider supporting me by supporting my sponsor, go to the description, click on the link which is Curiousstream.com, slash mentor pilot and the mentor pilot coupon code which will give you a huge 25 off the annual subscription fee which is only 14.99 per year which is amazing value for money. Now back to the video in the cockpit, the way the two communication radios are configured is the communication radio number. one on the captain's side is configured in the current air traffic control unit.

The second communication radio on the first officer's side is set to the emergency frequency one to one decimal five at a slightly lower volume just to distinguish the two radio frequencies. each other, we always keep one one five set on the standby radio so that if we lose radio contact with the current center we're talking to, someone else can call and put us on one to a decimal five so that's something which we always do now on this

airbus

a320

there was also a car system connected to the number three communication radio and that echo system allows both our traffic control and the company to send text messages to the pilots and the way they What works is that the text message will be notified on the ecam screen inside the cockpit and then the pilots will have to open the message as manually pulling the message will not appear on the ecam screen.

There is a system where pilots can be audibly notified that they have received a heading message through a sound in the cockpit, but unfortunately this aircraft was not equipped with this, generally speaking, the Airbus A320s in the fleet of the Northwest were only equipped with this if they were going to be Flying over large expanses of sea, the flight continued as normal for about two hours when the first officer was in contact with the air traffic controller at the Denver center. At this time, the flight attendant called the cabin and asked them if they were interested in getting some food. and we pilots are always interested in getting some food, so they said yes and the captain also took the opportunity to go out to the bathroom when he came back from the bathroom, they got their food, they ate the food, but during the food they started.

When discussing the new preferential bidding system, the PBS system, the captain explained to the first officer that he was really unhappy with the bids he had managed to obtain for the next month because they would force him to travel much more than he expected. and the first officer said that he was actually quite confident in how to use this system. When the captain heard this, he took his personal laptop, put it in front of him and started displaying the downloaded file of his offers for the next one. month to the first officer, the first officer took a look at his screen, listened to what had happened and then also grabbed his own laptop, put it in front of him and proceeded to try to instruct the captain on how he was supposed to use it about the system it is also worth mentioning at this point that both in the northwest airlines and in most airlines around the world pilots are not allowed to use what we call personal electronic devices peds, there are several reasons for this one of them is which can distract us, another thing is that we need to have special fire extinguishing procedures for all the electronic components that include batteries that we have inside the cockpit, but on this occasion both pilots are using their computerslaptops simultaneously while this conversation is taking place between the pilots, the air traffic controller in downtown Denver, is trying to call the plane to tell them to change to the plane's next control frequency, he gets no response, so call again and still no answer and this is where the nordo event has no radio.

A communication event is started. This is also known in Europe as a watch event. Prolonged loss of communication. If a Nordo event occurs, air traffic controllers are trained to follow a specific routine. They're supposed to continue trying to get to the plane, obviously, but. If they can't get to the plane in about 10 minutes, they are supposed to contact their FAA representative and that representative is supposed to send out an alert on something called the US National Event Network, this alert will notify various government agencies. , including the FBI, Pentagon and Norad, and this is usually what causes fighter jets to be sent to intercept the plane and see what is going on.

Obviously this has become really very important after the 911 attacks, but for some reason on this occasion it took much longer than the stipulated 10 minutes for this to happen. The air traffic controller has now also contacted North West Airlines headquarters and told them to try any means they have to contact. the plane, the dispatchers obviously do this, they send multiple messages to the plane, but remember what I said before that no audible chime was sent every time a cost message was sent to this particular plane, so in this case Both pilots are still looking at their laptop, they are still engrossed in this discussion about the bidding system and neither of them notices the messages on their camera screen that they have messages from their dispatch.

The pilots are now discussing more and more details about the preferential bidding system. They are getting very involved and very interested in the discussion neither of them realize that there are several radio calls with the call sign both said they could hear the radio episode in the background but they did not recognize that someone was calling them in Minutes pass, they fly farther and farther and soon they approach the top of the arena, which is where the flight management computer calculates that they should start their approach toward Minneapolis, stopping at the top of the arena. sand this generates a deceleration message on both main flight displays, basically saying that the aircraft will now begin to slow down towards the lowest safe speed to conserve some energy and this is something the aircraft is programmed to do in case We get a delayed descent clearance from traffic control, but in this case neither pilot realizes this is happening, rather the plane simply continues flying along the pre-programmed route toward the start. of the standard arrival procedure on the ground, air traffic.

The controller is still unable to come into contact with the plane and only watch the plane get closer and closer to its destination, the dispatchers inside the Northwest Airlines headquarters are starting to get very worried because they can only see the plane keep 37,000 feet but it should have started descending a long time ago and they don't know if anyone has breached the flight deck and maybe the pilots don't even have control of this plane and it's been here for over an hour in this nordo In case For the national event network to finally activate, the plane simply continues flying along the standard rival route and as it approaches the end point it has programmed, it sends a message on the fmc cdu units that says: "let the discount Go ahead," basically says that, go ahead.

For my part, I have a lateral discontinuity. I don't know what they want me to do. Nobody realizes this. Instead, the plane flies over the last waypoint and that changes the flight mode enunciator on both main flight displays from navigation mode to heading mode, so the plane simply continues flying in a straight line. Maintaining the last heading it had before the last waypoint at time 2001 Central Standard Time, this is about the time they should have been landing the plane flies over the Minneapolis airport at 37,000 feet and continues towards This about 12 minutes later one of the flight attendants calls the cabin and asks them about their rival's time.

They are getting a little worried behind because they have not realized that the plane is starting to descend. Normally they can hear the The engine reverses and the The plane is pitching downward, but they haven't noticed any of that and they haven't gotten the normal sound they get when the plane descends to 10,000 feet, and it's at this point that the pilots finally look up. discussion and realizes that no more data is displayed on their navigation screen, it's just a black screen, they look outside but can't see any light because it's a cloudy night, the captain approaches and switches from normal map mode like a wind rose. on your navigation screen that way you can also see a little bit behind the plane and realize that they have flown over Minneapolis and flown almost 100 nautical

miles

east of the destination.

The first officer in charge of radio communications is now trying to call. air traffic control but of course the frequency they have tuned to their com1 is from more than an hour and a half ago so that does not work but rather it goes to the secondary radio box where they have one by one five little ones the emergency tunes the frequency and achieves seize control of Winnipeg. Winnipeg gives them the correct frequency that they should be speaking, which is downtown Minneapolis. They call them and tell them that they have been distracted and that they want to turn 180 degrees to enter. and instead they approach from the east, air traffic control is obviously very relieved to get back in touch with the pilots, but they are also a little suspicious, they don't know if it is actually the pilot they are talking to .

They asked the pilots the reason why they have been nordo for so long, the pilot only says that they were distracted and can't go any further, the air traffic controllers then give them several left and right turns and also clear them. for a first arrival route than for a second just to ensure that the aircraft actually follows its instructions during descent, air traffic control also asks pilots to confirm that the flight deck is secure while this happens, the first officer also looks down at the screen of his electronic camera and notices that they have several messages from a-cars, he picks them up and sees that there are several messages saying to contact air traffic control, but unfortunately, when he comes in and wants read them, press the delete all button. which eliminates all acoustic messages as the pilots are now back in radio contact with the traffic controllers.

Norad is able to stop the fighter jets they were about to send to intercept the plane. The captain also gives a pass to the passengers who are now updated. them at the new arrival time, which will be approximately 23 to 25 minutes from when it touched down and at time 21 or seven, more than an hour after its original expected landing time, Northwest Airlines Flight 188 landed safely. safe way in Minneapolis, the plane taxi. The scene stops at the parking lot gate and he encounters several law enforcement representatives, including police officers and also a representative from the North West Airlines chief pilot office.

The pilots are taking a breathalyzer test to make sure they have no alcohol in their blood and they also have to give an initial statement as to why this happened and they continued to claim they were distracted. This incident received a lot of media attention and that is completely understandable because it is not often that you see a plane fail. its destination more than 100 nautical

miles

away, the investigation into what really happened in the cockpit was somewhat hampered by the fact that investigators did not have access to a large portion of the cockpit voice recorder and that was due because the plane had been turned on and off several times before they took out the cockpit voice recorder and that had eaten up the recording, so they only had about 15 minutes, but they had all the statements from both the pilots of cabin crew and air traffic. controllers and what occurred to them was that the pilots had become very distracted, they had completely lost their situational awareness because they were using their personal electronic devices, which they were not allowed to do and that led to this very long 91 minute nordo event.

As a result, the FAA decided to revoke both pilots' licenses within days of the event, which meant that the pilot lost his job at Northwest Airlines, the captain decided to retire early, and the first officer never returned to work at Northwest Airlines. . So what do I think about this? Well, I think this clearly shows how dangerous distractions in the flight deck can be and how personal electronic devices and their use in the cockpit could create distractions like this as a pilot. We have to maintain situational awareness at all times. We have to know what is happening, where we are and who we are talking to.

There are mitigation procedures to avoid nordo plots or events, for example, we are taught to do it every 20 minutes if we haven't heard. or think that we haven't heard our own cold signal call on the radio frequency and do a radio check that we are also supposed to follow when we pass the boundaries of the spruces in the airspace because that is when we are normally transferred if we haven't heard nothing, we need to check why that is and there are many other techniques like that, such as using headphones and making sure the volume is loud enough so that you can hear it and using one to one, these five. at a volume that you can actually hear, but I must also say that I feel very sorry for these guys, there is no excuse for not contacting traffic control for an hour and a half and flying over their destination, it shows a really bad situation. consciousness together, but all their training records and everything shows that these two pilots were actually good pilots who just became deeply distracted.

By the way, this is also why we're not supposed to engage in really intense conversations while flying, which is why we avoid talking about politics or religion, for example, because once you start talking about something like this, something that really interests you, you forget about time and you forget about what is happening around you now if the other part of the system would have worked if norad had done it. If they had sent the fighter jets and they had been intercepted, then this incident could have ended with an embarrassing trip to the chief pilot's office and perhaps some retraining instead of him losing his licenses.

These events occur. Planes are intercepted almost daily because of prolonged loss of communication, but it does not lead to a career-ending event now. If you want to see another video that I think you will be very interested in, then watch the video here if you want to support the work. what I do here on mentor pilot, then consider joining my patreon team. We have weekly meetings that I know you will love or you can also get a t-shirt. Have a fantastic day and we'll see you next time. bye