The pilots of a Northwest Airlines jet who claimed to be on their laptop computers when they flew past their Minneapolis destination by more than 160 kilometres mistakenly called the air traffic control centre for Winnipeg, according to initial reports on the incident.

The pilots said their first indication that something was wrong during the October flight came when they got a call from a flight attendant, according to summaries of interviews of the pilots, air-traffic controllers and flight attendants released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The flight attendant said that she had asked when the flight, which had taken off from San Diego, was going to land at their destination.

She said the pilot replied “12 Greenwich Time.” She said when she told the pilot she didn’t know what that meant, the pilot responded that she was “hosed” and hung up.

The pilots then contacted Air Traffic Control, but “neither pilot could remember what frequency they used” and that “someone” gave them a frequency to contact the Minneapolis centre.

“It was determined that the crew inadvertently contacted Winnipeg Center,” one of the documents says.

The controllers at the Winnipeg centre gave the pilots the correct frequency to Minneapolis so they could turn around and return to their original destination.

15 attempts to contact pilots

Airline dispatchers had tried but failed to contact the pilots 15 times during the flight, using computerized text messages to the cockpit as well as a dedicated phone system. None of those messages got a response.

The pilots, who have said they were on their laptops at the time and weren’t paying attention, have since lost their pilot’s licences, which they are trying to get back.

The documents have also highlighted problems with communication among air traffic controllers, saying they didn’t speak to one another as the plane made its way across the country and that protocol was not followed.

For example, controllers never contacted NORAD military officials to say they had a plane that was not responding.

Other documents disclosed that fallout from the Northwest-Delta merger also created problems for controllers when they tried to contact Northwest dispatchers and enlist their help in trying to raise the silent pilots on the radio.

Some phone numbers to reach the dispatchers didn’t work or ended up with one controller being placed on hold for a few minutes.

Source: CBC News