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

this airbus a320 is cruising along at 37 000 feet over continental united states from the outside everything looks normal but no one has been able to reach the pilots of this aircraft close to one and a half hours what's happening inside stay a huge thank you to curiositystream for sponsoring this video in order for you to understand the story behind northwest airlines flight 188 you need to understand a little bit about the landscape in which the airlines operated in the united states after 9 11. the terrorist attacks on 911 together with some other economical factors that come together to make it really really hard for these airlines to survive this had led to several chapter 11 bankruptcy protections for some of the airlines and that in turn led to a lot of big mergers between these airlines between the years of 2004 and 2008. one of those mergers was between delta airlines and northwest airlines and that happened in october 2008. after that merger this new company became the world's biggest airline for a while now whenever you have a merger in an airline there's going to be friction that's because these two company cultures comes together and you will have things like seniority lists for example that need to be merged in together and this can lead to some pilots or cabin crew feeling that they're being pushed down in seniority because suddenly there are maybe hundreds of people that come in on top of them but on top of that you also have changes to standard operating procedures how the aircraft are actually being flown this was also true in the northwestern delta merger and they had changes to for example how the pre-flight setup looked so prior to the merger in northwest the captain would be the person who always set up the fmc and the overhead panel in the aircraft and after the merger the pilot flying set up the fmc and the first officer would then set up the overhead panel now these are small changes but when you have been used to operate an aircraft in a certain way for many many years and all of a sudden you're told to operate the same aircraft in a different way it is always hard for the pilots and the airlines were aware of this and they did these changes in steps during the merger process another thing that changed for the pilots when this merger happened was their preferential bidding system the way that they bid for their flights that they were going to do in the coming months because the way that it works in most airlines is that the pilots will have some say in how their scheduling works they will for example depending on their seniors in the company where they're based what they did last month flight time limitations and so on be able to impact the type of flights that they want to get in the future now in my airline i don't have a bidding system and that's because we are almost all of us living in the base that we operate from and we always come home every night so this means that it doesn't really matter what destinations you have but in america that's not very common instead a lot of the pilots are based in different parts of the united states and they have to fly into their base and operate from there and because of that it can have a huge impact on their life quality what kind of bidding that they are able to get in the case of the northwest delta merger the bidding system had changed substantially and the pilots had been given 150 pages of instructions on how this new bidding system was going to work and almost all of them felt that it was very confusing hard to work with and this is going to have a substantial impact on what happens on this flight the pilots of northwest flight 188 were both very experienced the captain was a 53 year old who were based in minneapolis but he was actually living together with his wife in just north of seattle this meant that he was trying to bid for flights that happened late in the afternoon on his first day and that finished early in around midday on his last day so he could travel into minneapolis before his first flight and then travel home after his last flight thereby minimizing the amount of hotel nights he had to spend in minneapolis the days before he started his five-day working pattern where the incident flight happened on his second day he'd spent off at home together with his wife on his first due today he started at 6 30 in the morning as a passive crew member flying on the jump seat from seattle over to minneapolis and he landed a few hours before midday which was also before he was supposed to start his first duty he spent that time in the northwest airlines crew room talking to a couple of instructors that were available in the crew room about how to work this new bidding system the first officer was also very experienced as a 54 year old who lived in salem oregon and he had a similar setup to his roster as the captain did so he would also try to fly in on his first day on the first day of rostering together he also departed at 6 30 in the morning he flew in and he landed about noon just prior to checking in for his flight out towards san diego just after noon on the 20th of october 2009 the two pilots met for the very first time they'd never flown together before they met up in the crew room together with the cabin crew we went through their flight documentation for the flights down from minneapolis to san diego and it looked like a completely normal flight they went out to the aircraft boarded the passengers and did a completely uneventful flight down towards san diego in san diego the pilots had a scheduled 19 hour stop but the cabin crew returned back towards minneapolis again the pilots were picked up by the hotel shuttle bus they went to the hotel and at the hotel the wife of the captain was waiting for him she had actually flown down from seattle so they could spend the evening together this meant that the pilot split up where the captain and his wife went off to have dinner and the first officer went to have dinner by himself but both of them returned back to the hotel well before midnight and had a full night's sleep which meant that they were fully rested on the following day the 21st of october which is the day of the incident flight just before noon the pilots left the hotel went out to the airport and started doing their pre-flight preparation and in the brief preparation everything looked normal the only slight issue was that there was an area of clear air turbulence forecasted along their flight route so the normal routing had been slightly changed but there was nothing unusual to that they were scheduled to climb to the cruiser to the 35 000 feet but they could go higher if they needed to the inbound flight was a little bit late and the cabin crew that was going to fly together with them back to minneapolis was already on board that flight when the aircraft finally arrived the pilots went on board introduced themselves to the cabin crew they had a quick briefing where they briefed the lead cabin crew member about the potential turbulence in the flight back they also checked the technical status of the aircraft which was fine there was nothing wrong with the aircraft the pilots decided that the captain was going to be pilot flying for the flight and the first officer pilot monitoring meaning that it was the first officer that was in charge of doing the paperwork and talking to our traffic control the captain set up the flight management computer the routing that we're going to fly and he filled it up all the way into the standard arrival route into minneapolis but he didn't put the runway in use because at that point they probably didn't know it they boarded 144 passengers that was booked for the flight so on board as they departed there were two pilots three cabin crew and 144 passengers at time 1459 pacific standard time northwest flight 188 pushed back from gate at san diego airport and started his journey up towards minneapolis initially the climb about was completely normal they climbed out to 35 000 feet which they had initially planned but fairly soon after they reached the cruising altitude they realized that there was quite a bit more turbulence than what they expected so they requested to climb to flight of a 3-7-0 37 000 feet instead and this was approved by a traffic control the crew executed the climb and about one hour and 23 minutes after takeoff they had established themselves at 37 000 feet the flight time was expected to be around 3 hours and 12 minutes so that would have been landing about 8 o'clock central standard time when the aircraft had stabilized itself at 37 000 feet the pilots decided to take their headsets off and instead they put the volume up on the overhead speaker so they could still hear air traffic control this way they were a little bit more comfortable and if the first officer needed to talk to a traffic control he could use his hand mic to do so and this is something you can do on the airbus a320 because it's reasonably quiet when you're in cruise on the boeing 737 that i fly it is noisy on pretty much any altitude you fly so we tend to keep our headsets on throughout the flight then it is a possibility that that this could have had an impact on what's about to happen and i'll tell you all about that after this short message from my sponsor now i know that you guys are watching my videos because you love learning new things and finding out the nitty-gritty nerdy details behind each story and if that's true you should seriously check out the sponsor of this episode which is curiositystream curiositystream is a high quality subscription streaming service with thousands of great non-fictional stories and documentaries from some of the best filmmakers in the world i am watching a series right now called what went wrong about the challenger shuttle disaster which is terrible but also really really interesting if you think peter that sounds really interesting well then consider supporting me by supporting my sponsor go down into the description click on the link which is curiositystream.com slash mentor pilot and the coupon code mentor pilot that will give you a whopping 25 off the annual subscription fee which is wait for it only 14.99 per year which is insane value for money now back to the video in the cockpit the way that the two communication radios are set up is that the communication radio number one which is on the captain's side is set to the current air traffic control unit the second communication radio which is 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 from each other we always keep one one five set on the standby radio so that if we would go out of radio contact with the current center that we're talking to someone else can call in and get us on one to one decimal five so that is something that we always do now on this airbus a320 there was also an a car system connected to the communication radio number three and that echo system enables both our traffic control and the company to send the text messages to the pilots and the way that that works is that the text message will be notified on the ecam screen inside of the cockpit and then the pilots will have to open up the message as in pull out the message manually it's not going to show up on the ecam screen there is a system where the pilots can be audibly notified that they've received an a course message through a ding in the cockpit but unfortunately this aircraft was not equipped with this generally speaking the airbus a320s in the northwest fleet were only equipped with this if they were going to be flying over large stretches of sea the flight continued completely normally for about two hours when the first officer was in contact with the denver center air traffic controller around that time the flight attendant called up the cockpit 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 to that and the captain also took the chance to go out to the toilet when he got back from the toilet they got their food they ate the food but during the meal they started discussing the new preferential bidding system the pbs system the captain explained to the first officer that he was really unhappy with the bids that he had managed to get for the next month because it would force him to do a lot more commuting than what he had hoped for and the first officer said that he was actually quite confident in how to use this system when the captain heard this he took up his own personal laptop and put that in front of him and he started showing the downloaded file of his bids for the next month to the first officer the first officer had a look at his screen listened to what had happened and then he also took up his own laptop put it in front of him and proceeded to to try to coach the captain on how he was supposed to use the system it should be mentioned at this point as well that both in northwest airlines as in most of the airlines around the world the pilots are not allowed to use what we call peds personal electronic devices there's several reasons for that one of them is that they can distract us another thing is that we need actually to have special fire fighting procedures for all the electronics that includes batteries that we have inside of the cockpit but on this occasion both of the pilots are using their laptops simultaneously as this conversation is going on between the pilots the air traffic controller in denver center is trying to call the aircraft up to tell them to switch to the next aircraft control frequency he gets no reply so he calls again and still there's no reply back and this is where the nordo event no radio communication event starts this is also referred to in europe as a clock event prolonged loss of communication if a nordo event does happen the air traffic controllers are trained to follow a specific routine they are you know supposed to continue to try to reach the aircraft obviously but if they can't reach the aircraft within about 10 minutes they're supposed to get in contact with their faa representative that faa representative is then supposed to send out an alert on something called the u.s domestic event network this alert will then notify several government agencies including the fbi the pentagon and norad and this is generally what gets the fighter jets dispatched to go up and intercept the aircraft to see what's going on this has obviously become really really important after the 911 attacks but for some reason on this occasion it took much much longer than the stipulated 10 minutes for this to happen the air traffic controller has now also reached out to the north west airlines headquarter and told them to please try any means that they have to contact the aircraft the dispatchers obviously does this they send several messages up to the aircraft but remember what i said before that there was no audible ding being sent through whenever an a cost message was sent to this particular aircraft so in this case both of the pilots are still looking at their laptop they're still engrossed in this discussion about the bidding system and none of them notices the messages on their acam screen that they have messages from their dispatch the pilots are now discussing more and more details about the preferential bidding system and they're getting really really into and interested in the discussion none of them notices that there are several radio calls with the call sign they both said that they could hear radio chapter in the background but they didn't recognize that anyone was calling them instead minutes pass by they fly further and further and soon they're getting closer to their top of the sand which is where the flight management computer calculates that they should initiate their sand to start their approach in towards minneapolis they pause the top of the sand this generates a decelerate message on both primary flight displays basically saying that the aircraft is now going to start to reduce speed back towards the lowest safe speed in order to conserve a little bit of energy and this is something that the aircraft is programmed to do in case we get a delayed descent clearance by a traffic control but in this case none of the pilots realizes that this is happening instead the aircraft just keeps flying along the pre-programmed route towards the start of the standard arrival procedure down on the ground the air traffic controller still cannot get into contact with the aircraft and just see how the aircraft's getting closer and closer to its destination the dispatchers inside of the headquarters of northwest airlines are starting to get really worried now because they can only see that the aircraft is maintaining 37 000 feet but it should have been started to descend long time ago and they don't know whether or not someone has breached the flight deck and maybe the pilots are not even in control of this aircraft and it's around here more than an hour into this nordo event that the domestic event network finally gets activated the aircraft just continues to fly along the standard rival route and when it's getting closer to the final point it has programmed it sent out a message on the fmc cdu units saying let discount ahead basically saying that ahead of me i have a lateral discontinuity i don't know what you guys want me to do no one notices this either instead the aircraft flies over the last waypoint and that changes the flight mode enunciator on both primary flight display from navigation to heading mode so the aircraft just continues to fly straight ahead maintaining the last heading it had before the last waypoint at time 2001 central standard time this is more or less around the time that they should have been landing the aircraft overflies minneapolis airport at 37 000 feet and continues towards the east about 12 minutes later one of the flight attendants calls up the cockpit and asks them about their rival time they're getting a little bit worried in the back because they haven't noticed that the aircraft starts to descend normally they can hear the engine spooling back and the aircraft pitching down but they haven't noticed any of that and they haven't received the normal ding that they get as the aircraft descends through 10 000 feet and it's at this point that the pilots finally look up from their discussion and realizes that on their navigation display there's no more data shown it's just a black screen they look outside but they can't see any lights because it's a cloudy evening the captain reaches over and changes from the normal map mode to the compass rose mode on his navigation display that way he can see a little bit behind the aircraft as well and realizes that they have overflown minneapolis and they've flown almost 100 nautical miles east of the destination the first officer who's in charge of radio communication now try to call air traffic control but of course the frequencies that they have tuned on their com1 is from more than an hour and a half ago so that doesn't work instead it goes over to the secondary radio box where they have one to one small five the emergency frequency tune and he manages to get hold of winnipeg control winnipeg gives them the correct frequency they should be talking to which is minneapolis center they call them up and tell them that they have been distracted and that they want to turn 180 degrees around to come in and do an approach in from the east instead air traffic control are obviously very relieved to get back into contact with the pilots but they're also a little bit suspicious they don't know if it's actually the pilot that they're speaking to so they asked the pilots the reason that they have been nordo for that long the pilot just states that they were distracted and they can't go further into it than that the air traffic controllers then give them several turns left and right and they also clear them for first one than a second arrival route just to make sure that the aircraft is actually following their instructions during the descent the pilots are also asked by air traffic control to confirm that the flight deck is secure as this is happening the first officer also looks down onto their ecam display and realizes that they have several a-cars messages he pulls them up and sees that there are a number of messages saying contact air traffic control but unfortunately as he goes in and wants to read them he presses the delete all button instead which takes away all of the acoust messages since the pilots are now back in radio contact with the traffic controllers norad can stand down the fighter jets that they were about to send up to intercept the aircraft the captain also makes a pa to the passengers now updating them on the new arrival time which is going to be in about 23 to 25 minutes from when he made the pa and at time 21 or seven more than an hour after their expected original landing time northwest airlines flight 188 land safely in minneapolis the aircraft taxi scene pulls up onto the parking gate and is met by several representatives of law enforcement including police officers and also a representative of the north west airlines chief pilot office the pilots are giving a breathalyzer test to make sure that they don't have alcohol in the blood and they're also having to give an initial statement on why it was that this happened and they continued to state that they got distracted this incident got a lot of media attention and that's completely understandable because it's not often that you see an aircraft miss its destination with over 100 nautical miles the investigation into what actually went on in the cockpit was a little bit hampered by the fact that the investigators didn't get access to a large chunk of the cockpit voice recorder and that was because the aircraft had been powered up and powered down several times before the cockpit voice recorder was taken out and that had eaten into the recording so they only had about 15 minutes but they did have all of the statement from both the pilots from the cabin crew and from the air traffic controllers and what they came up with was that the pilots had indeed become very very distracted they had lost their situational awareness completely 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 consequence of this the faa chose to revoke both of the pilots licenses within days of the event this meant that the pilot lost their employment with northwest airlines the captain decided to pre-retire and the first officer never got back into employment with northwest again so what do i think about this then well i think that this clearly shows how dangerous it can be with distractions on the flight deck and how personal electronic devices and the use of them in the cockpit could lead up to distractions like this as a pilot we have to maintain situational awareness at all times we have to know what's going on where we are and who we're talking to there are mitigation procedures to avoid plots or nordo events for example we are taught to every 20 minutes if we haven't heard or think we haven't heard our own cold sign call up on the radio frequency and do a radio check we're also supposed to keep track of when we move past fir boundaries in the airspace because that's when we normally get transferred over if we haven't heard anything we need to check why that is and there are many other techniques like that like for example using headset and making sure that the volume is loud enough so that you can hear it and the use of one to one this one five on a volume that you can actually hear but i have to also say that i feel really sorry for these guys right there's no excuse for not getting into contact with that traffic control for an hour and a half and overflying your destination it shows really bad situational awareness together but all of their training records and everything shows that these two pilots were actually good pilots that just got deeply deeply distracted this is by the way also why we are not supposed to get into really charged conversations while we're flying which is why we avoid talking politics or religion for example because once you do start talk about something like this something that really interests you you forget about time and you forget about what's going on around you now if the other part of the system would have worked if norad would have sent up the fighter jets and they would have been intercepted well then this incident might have ended with an embarrassing trip to the chief pilot's office and maybe some retraining rather than losing their licenses these events do occur aircraft are intercepted on an almost daily basis because of prolonged loss of communication but it doesn't lead to a career ending event now if you want to see another video that i think that you'll find really interested in well then check out the video up here if you want to support the work that i do here on mentor pilot then consider becoming a part of my patreon crew we have weekly hangouts which i know that you guys will love or you can also get yourself a t-shirt have a fantastic day and i'll see you next time bye

Channel: Mentour Pilot

Views: 703,730

Keywords: captain, mentour pilot, mentor pilot, crash investigation, full epsiodes, aviation, pilot, crash, air crash investigation, final report, boeing, airbus, piper, cessna, disaster, fatal crash, air incident, air disasters 2022, minneapolis, northwest airlines flight 188, distraction, laptop, distracted, top of descent, san diego, denver, NORDO, PLOC, situational awareness, a320, pentagon, fbi, norad, deadhead, deadheading, jumpseat, salem, oregon

Id: uzmeGS29nu8

Length: 24min 45sec (1485 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 19 2022